August 25, 2006
What's wrong with this picture?
Having read almost-universally positive reviews of Claire Messud's new novel, The Emperor's Children (Knopf), in the New York Times, the Village Voice, and the New York Observer; encountered UK coverage online in The Economist, The Observer; noticed the Booker Prize nomination; and found this profile in the LA Weekly, I finally decided yesterday to shell out my money and pay the retail price for the hardcover so I could enjoy it while on my trip this weekend. I hit five independent bookstores in SF's Mission District, none of which had a copy. Finally, at the last one, the proprietor informed me that the novel's street date is next Tuesday, August 29.
How many customers like me, wishing to support independent bookstores and this author, are finding themselves unable to do so? What percentage of those customers will still remember the book next week, or the week after, or whenever they are next at a bookstore? Certainly not 100%, though I will still buy it (admittedly at Strand, where I will pay less than I would have here in SF). Who's to blame here? Is the publisher slow? Are the reviewers running their coverage too early? And we wonder why the book industry is facing difficulties.
(Several of the above links come via Bookslut)
UPDATE, 9/10: Across the pond, Alfred Hickling isn't quite as impressed:
The first two-thirds of the novel detail these characters' romantic and careerist manoeuvres; it is very capably done, were it not for the fact that Messud drops significant hints that it all amounts to so much rearranging of the deckchairs on the Titanic. [ . . . ] Yet the overall problem is not so much that the book lacks ambition as that its focus seems frustratingly narrow.