And They All Lived Happily Ever After...

It’ll come as no surprise to anyone who’s met me that I like talking about books. I like talking about books a lot. When it comes to novels, I can – and often do – talk the hind leg off a donkey (then sell it to Findus for a reasonable fee).

Horses for main courses. I'll get my coat.

My job does little to curb this habit, and as a result it’s no surprise that the same phrases pop up over and over again. Case in point #1: ‘Unputdownable’.  I hate this one. That is NOT a word.

 Case in point #2: ‘I never wanted it to end’. This one I understand. It is a fascinating feature of the human brain that, when faced with a narrative construct; be it a book, film or play, it voluntarily overrides its capacity for disbelief and encourages you to react emotionally to the story.

With a well written book, this naturally means that you form quasi-emotional attachments to the characters. 300-odd pages later, you are wrenched from their lives, never to meet them again. Life is cruel, and Hollywood adaptations are often crueller, distorting characters, plot points and story-arcs beyond all recognition. Of course you don’t want the book to end.

Ugh. Ricky Gervais.

But end they must. If not, you end up with one of those bloated series of books that even the fans are dying for closure from.

Thank... GOD.

A book’s ending can mark it for life. I’m going to make a confession here. I HATE Jane Eyre. Loathe it. And to prove this to you I’m not even going to touch the central relationship between Jane and Mr. Rochester. The VILE relationship between Jane and Mr. Rochester. 

Jane Eyre’s ending is one of the most dissatisfying conclusions of any novel I have ever read. Let’s take a look at the final chapter. It begins with the line ‘Reader, I married him’. Cue swooning, fireworks and uncomfortable questions as to how healthy a decision this actually is. 

We are then subjected to that trope of narrative fiction – the ten-years-on retrospective epilogue. Flying in the face of the golden rule ‘show, don’t tell’, every bit part player gets a paragraph or two summarising their own happy ending (or lack of). It’s a tedious, unimaginative and frankly ridiculous way to end a novel. I’ve just picked up my old GCSE copy of the text, and scrawled under each paragraph is scribbled and angry face and ‘WHO CARES?!’ Safe to say, ten years distance has not changed my opinion.

Why am I picking on Jane Eyre, though? The retrospective epilogue is a widely used format, and there are infinitely more sprawling versions widely (and sadly) available. Here’s why. This whole, horrible, sickly ending was made possible by…

------------------------------ MASSIVE 19^th CENTURY PLOT SPOILER-------------------

Mr. Rochester’s mad wife burning to death in attic in which he has her locked.

Charming.

Let’s recap: One of English Literature’s greatest romantic heroes is a man who locks women up at the slightest sign of mental illness.

What else was he to do? Oh, well, you know… Divorce?

Seriously. Henry VIII made humping and dumping legal in the 16^th Century. It was never revoked. Yet In lots of the great love stories written between that time and the Twentieth Century, a wife or husband is presented as an unmovable obstacle to Twu Wuv. What did authors in the mean-time think divorce was? A stupid horse?

Divorce, geddit? Div Horse? ... I'll get me coat.

Now it’s obvious that having Rochester serving legal papers to his wife would have made for a slightly less dramatic story, but there’s a whole sea of possible solutions between that and enforced captivity.

Sign these. Or it's the attic for you.

In conclusion, the only positive that I can take from Jane Eyre is that it serves as very useful context for Jean Rhys’ excellent novel Wide Sargasso Sea.

--------- END OF MASSIVE 19^TH CENTURY PLOT SPOILER ----

Moving on, I hope that by ripping shreds into one of our best-loved classics, I have started to make my extremely ranty point. No matter how engaging the characters, how thrilling the plot, end with a fizzle and everything goes out of the window. Long boring epilogues are by no means the only way to achieve this. I have just finished reading Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff.

 And I really really enjoyed it. It’s a fun, high-octane romp through a world where good and evil have organised, mad old bag ladies have made beneficial deals with God when it comes to scratch cards, and bubble guns shoot out death by natural causes. In the middle of this is a pervading theme of pedophilia which could have easily come across as exploitative, but somehow holds the plot together perfectly.

I was racing through this story at high speed, desperate for closure for what becomes a very tense narrative when I hit the brakes hard. Twice. There they were…

Not one, but two perfectly unnecessary and woefully underdeveloped plot twists that hit hard, one after the other, in an M Night Shyamalan-esque display of ‘twist for twist’s sake’. They threw the story horribly off-kilter and brought all of the intrigue to a screeching halt. Puzzled, I put the book down. Why does this happen? I’ve worked in publishing for long enough to know that novels are not like coursework essays. They aren’t written chronologically, leaving the author on deadline-eve high on caffeine and Ben&Jerry’s desperately trying to bring the plot to any conclusion possible. Not in any publishing company I’ve come across, anyway. Somewhere there might be an editor waiting with a stop-watch and red pen at the ready, waiting to scrawl a big F in the margins, and possibly even the terrifying ‘See Me’ at the bottom – but I doubt it. 

Sorry, Mr. Dickens, but we have some concerns about the ending...

If this blog post serves any purpose, I hope it will be to encourage its very limited readership to demand MORE from their fiction, and to put it out there that ‘Classic’ does not necessarily equal ‘Flawless’. Like all consumer products, fiction is constantly shifting and evolving to meet the demands of the consumer (hence our shop’s bewildering array of 50 Shades-alikes mouldering on a shelf).

Endings should not be consigned to a few throw-away lines. They serve as the final impression a reader will have of the book. Make them count.

The End

Epilogue:

The author went on to have a very satisfying dinner of salmon and rice and is now eyeing the chocolate biscuits with interest.

Jane Eyre remained unaffected by the author’s criticism and still resides in the classic literature section with Mr. Rochester.

Henry VIII is still dead.

M Night Shyamalan is probably working on a twist within a twist within a twist.  

Cover Girl

So, it’s been a while. 

To be frank, I have no excuse but for a spectacular case of writer’s block. To put this into perspective, please note that before my previous hard drive fritzed itself into oblivion, (taking with it 10 years of photos and music), there was a word doc permanently open, waiting for my thoughts and feelings regarding a book. One specific book: The Rules According to JWOWW!

I wonder what she's measuring?

I never thought that there would be a barrel I wouldn’t scrape in order to secure an easy laugh. But this book, by Jersey Shore ‘Guidette’ Jeni  Farley, proved to be my Waterloo. I read the book from cover to cover, I really did. And honestly, it was exactly what you’d expect. There’s very little fun to be had (as I discovered) in attempting to mock something you knew would be completely mockable.  And so, for two months the document sat accusingly in my task bar as I gradually deleted its contents. When my hard drive gave up the ghost, only one part of my review remained. A quote taken from the book, along with the only picture that could possibly do it any justice. Before moving on, therefore, I present you with my review of The Rules According to JWOWW! – A.K.A: The Unsnarkable rules of Jeni Farley .

‘Hanging with the hottest gorilla in the club’.

There. With that out of the way, let’s move on to something ENTIRELY unexpected.

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is celebrating (is that the right word?) its fiftieth year of publication. It’s a sad truth that despite its brilliance, it never received the attention or praise of her poetic works. Nevertheless, if the words ‘Sylvia Plath’ are in any way familiar to you, you won’t need to have read the novel to know it’s not a feel-good romp. Frolics, hi-jinks and humorous lessons on life, love and shopping are notably absent. Throw in the biographical detail that her suicide followed publication by a few short months and the clouds darken ever further over the novel. In an extract from a letter written to her mother Plath writes: “…I think it will show how isolated a person feels when he is suffering a breakdown... I've tried to picture my world and the people in it as seen through the distorting lens of a bell jar.”

So imagine my surprise when the new, 50^th anniversary edition of the book plopped merrily onto my trolley.

Look back at the quote, now back at the cover. Quote… cover… quote… cover…

… I know, right?

Many column inches have been filled over the weekend on this topic. The the cover has been ridiculed almost unanimously for missing the point by a very wide margin indeed.

I have to admit that the vitriol expressed has been slightly unwarranted. Yes, it bears no relevance to the book’s contents in the slightest, but the wailing and gnashing of teeth is, let’s face it, ever so slightly Over The Top.

Just tell me WHY?!?

It has been accused of being anti-feminist.

It’s a woman wearing make-up.

A woman wearing make-up is not by definition anti-feminist

.

I would cheerfully kick anyone who questioned my feminist credentials in the groin. But I would also do so to anyone attempting to rob me of my blusher and eyeliner. 

Preciousss....

Crotch kicking all round. That’s feminism.

 (nb:  please note that that is not the definition of feminism. Quote me on that and I’ll kick you i….. etc. etc.)

Insensitive? Yes. Bizarre? Yes. Demeaning? No.

I would argue that we have been heading in this direction for a very long time. Having worked with books all of my adult life, I have seen book covers of all types cross my desk and counter, and have hated a good 60% of them. Anodyne, boring and frankly bizarre, they often do the book’s contents a huge disservice. I am not alone. My colleague who runs the SciFi section of our shop emits audible groans when yet another book lands on her trolley with a mysterious cloaked figure in profile or middle distance, often accompanied by the outline of a weapon. In silhouette.

The adventures of one man and his dressing gown.

 Her point is a good one. For a bookseller passionate about extolling the virtues of science fiction to readers wary of the clichés and tropes of the genre, these covers do her no favours whatsoever.  It is painfully obvious that in many cases, no one beyond a couple of editors have bothered reading the contents before deciding on the cover. Now that’s marketing for you.

I could go on...

In my opinion, the ridiculous cover gracing The Bell Jar is the logical conclusion to years and years of awful artwork decisions. It is only because the subject is so well known for being the polar opposite to the spirit of the cover that it has attracted this level of press attention.

There are, I think, two directions in which the publishing industry can now head. Either a sea change occurs; with an increase of money, resources and (frankly) imagination going into cover art… OR we take it to the other extreme: contrapuntal jacket design.

I would genuinely love to see publishers attempt to smooth over their mistakes of the past by producing series of book jackets which deliberately and heroically miss the point. With The Bell Jar as an iconic trailblazer, the books would each be decorated with a photograph or piece of artwork which either bares absolutely no resemblance to the book’s contents, or instead focuses on entirely the wrong aspect of the story.

So taken was I by this idea that I have taken the liberty of using my prodigious Microsoft Paint skills to get the ball rolling on this one. Enjoy.

Admit it, you're all jealous of my mad Paint skillz

Sorry, I couldn't resist...

Having got the ball rolling, I'll quit whilst I'm ahead. 

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This landed on my trolley today. Coincidence?!? (clearly I bought it).