At the end of my first year as a United Agent it is cheering to see several of the books I’ve been featuring appearing in best-of-2008 lists in The Observer, The Daily Mail, The New York Times, Economist, The Times, and The Irish Times. The book that appears on three of these lists (The Observer, Economist, and The Times) and has also been on the UK paperback bestseller list since it was first published by Fourth Estate in September is BAD SCIENCE by Ben Goldacre. Foreign editions will be published in Germany (S. Fischer Verlag), Russia (Exmo), Italy (Bruno Mondadori), and Korea (Sigma), and there’s now a US deal being finalized.
In the The Observer “Here are the ones they just couldn’t put down”, critics picked four United Agents titles:
I FOUND MY HORN by Jasper Rees- “His account of a year spent struggling with the instrument is utterly original, wildly funny and, in the end, unexpectedly moving.” (Peter Conrad)
Laura Beatty’s POLLARD “is an exceptional debut, telling the story of a young girl who runs away from her family to live in a forest…a savagely articulate account of the harm we do to ourselves when we destroy our wild places.” (Olivia Laing)
“For sheer savagery, the illusion-destroying, joyous attack on the self-regarding, know-nothing orthodoxies of the modern middle classes, BAD SCIENCE by Ben Goldacre cannot be beaten.” (Trevor Phillips)
“My choice for this year is FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE: THE WOMAN AND HER LEGEND by Mark Bostridge…Her story is beautifully balanced by that of her reputation, her sanctification and later demonisation. Gripping and faultless.” (Mary Womack)
The Daily Mail’s top “animal tale for Christmas” is UNDER THE PAW by Tom Cox, “His descriptions of regurgitated mice, fur balls, ripped-to-shreds duvets, mistaking a frantic ‘miaow’ for the fire alarm are certain to have you in stitches.” Two of the deals I enjoyed doing most this year were selling UNDER THE PAW in Italy to Rizzoli and in Germany to Ullstein.
The New York Times picks THE LOST LUGGAGE PORTER by Andrew Martin as “Notable Crime Fiction of 2008″. Marilyn Stasio writes, “One choice entry among all this vivid historical storytelling is…the latest book in Andrew Martin’s series featuring a detective who works for the great railways that crisscrossed Britain in the industrial age. His pursuits of thieves, con men and organized gangs take him on distant train journeys through a network of vast terminals and labyrinthine tracks.”
Susie Boyt’s enchanting memoir, MY JUDY GARLAND LIFE, was picked in three best of 2008 lists:
“An extraordinary book. Simultaneously an analysis and celebration of the writer’s lifelong obsession with Garland it is as risky, clever, moving and innovative a personal essay as you could wish read. Just glorious.” Joseph O’Neill (author of Booker shortlisted “Netherland”), Guardian Books of the Year
“MY JUDY GARLAND LIFE was a breathtaking surge… The prologue alone was packed with enough love and proof to carry most memoirs. Boyt is a curious individual – super-alert to suffering and grief, but a believer in the primacy of glamour, of putting on a good dress and a brave face, of keeping your blouse shipshape and your cocktail shaker crystal – and always being cautious for your poor heart, because she has ripped open hers and it’s hurting enough for the rest of us.” Antonia Quirke, New Statesman
and The Times picked MY JUDY GARLAND LIFE as a top Biography/Memoir, “an outrageously entertaining memoir of hero-worship”. Virago published the beautiful hardcover edition last February, and Bloomsbury USA will be bringing MY JUDY GARLAND LIFE to America in April 2009. I haven’t yet sold any translation rights to this magical book that is impossible to categorize but cheers the heart of everyone who reads it.
The Times also picked THE MINUTES OF THE LAZARUS CLUB by Tony Pollard as a top Thriller (“an engaging period murder mystery set amid the fog and industrial upheaval of mid-19th century London”); and BAD SCIENCE by Ben Goldacre as the top Science book. And also in The Times “If you only buy one book this Christmas make sure it’s…THE UNCOMMON READER by Alan Bennett”. Rights to THE UNCOMMON READER have sold in twenty-four languages, and in addition to being a bestseller in the UK and USA, it is also a bestseller in Italy, Germany, and the first of Alan Bennett’s books to sell significant numbers of copies in Holland, Sweden, and Denmark.
The Irish Times has picked A PERFECT WAITER by Alain Claude Sulzer as one of “The Literary Landmarks of 2008″, “Elegant, poised and rather brutal…Sulzer’s adroit, understated narrative proves a chilling study of betrayal.” A PERFECT WAITER was also the surprise winner of one of France’s most prestigious literary awards, the 2008 Prix Medicis Etranger. This was an enormous honour, especially for an author who until this year had never before been published outside of Switzerland and Germany! Alain Claude Sulzer’s devastating love story, A PERFECT WAITER, is truly his breakthrough novel, translated into seven languages and receiving rave reviews in each country where it has been published.
I keep telling people that PILCROW by Adam Mars-Jones is one of the most extraordinary novels I have ever read, and in the TLS “Books of the Year”, Margaret Drabble wrote an exuberant endorsement: “One of the most remarkable novels I have read in recent years. I would say it was a tour de force, if that didn’t make it sound formidable which it is not. It is as intelligent, enjoyable, fluent, witty and engaging as [Adam Mars-Jones's] shorter fiction. How he contrives to make his obsession with ill health and his addiction to medical textbooks so life-enhancing is a mystery to me. Proust is the nearest parallel, and Mars-Jones’s narrator’s description of his grandmother’s virtuoso scrambling of eggs deserves to stand by Proust’s two-page description of the boiling of a pan of milk. The hymn to Velcro is also a delight. This book is packed with factual information, on subjects as wide-ranging as wheelchairs, adolescent sex, song lyrics from musicals, games and gadgets of the 1950s, the sadism of nurses and the optimistic outlook of Quaker schools. It is a joy and a conundrum, and I look forward eagerly to the next instalment, with further adventures of his extraordinary protagonist.”
I posted additional praise for PILCROW earlier in this blog (if you read one review read James Wood in the London Review of Books) and foreign rights are sold in Italy to Stile Libero/Einaudi and in France to J.C. Lattes. The second volume of the life of John Cromer is one manuscript I am most excited to read in 2009!
Happy holiday reading!
