Under the Radar

I’ve been extraordinarily busy recently. After reading a staggering array of debut thriller novels for the International Thriller Writers, then tackling a plethora of short stories for the British Crime Writers’ Association--in both cases, for the purposes of awards judging--I found myself behind in book reviewing. Then last week, as I surveyed the array of new works laying around me, all waiting to be read, I found myself suddenly frozen, unable to even begin tackling the stacks. I realized that I wanted to read something I’d actually bought off a bookshelf, not been sent with the hope that I would mention it or critique it in some venue.

Author Margaret Atwood is evidently experiencing a similar mood. She was quoted in the London Times last week lamenting that the Internet, with its quick access to supposedly “perfect” books for each individual reader, is killing off the joy of book-browsing and bleeding away the joy of happening upon new and potentially delightful works by chance. According to The Times’ Ben Hoyle:

Margaret Atwood, the Canadian author whose books include The Edible Woman, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Blind Assassin, which won the Booker Prize in 2000, said that the “serendipity” of discovering something in a bookshop has not been replicated online.

Atwood told the London Book Fair last week: “You are not going to get the same experience on the net. Amazon is trying, by saying, ‘If you like this book you might like this other book’, but it’s often something quite offensive that they suggest.”

She added that the success of internet retailers meant that bookshops were missing out on “the sales that they wouldn’t expect to make, but make because somebody sees this beautiful cover and they pick it up and read the front flap.

“They might look at the back flap and the picture of the author, then they might read the first two or three pages. If they are [like] me, they might then open it in the middle. It all takes about five minutes.”

Fewer customers [are] taking those vital five minutes as online and supermarket book sales increase. Between 2001 and 2005, the market share of independent bookshops fell by 16 per cent, Book Marketing, the consumer research company, said. Over the same period, the supermarkets’ share grew by 90 per cent and internet sales by 183 per cent.

Later in the week, though, The Times published an opposing point-of-view piece by Michael Gove, the Conservative MP for Surrey Heath, who stated his conviction that the Internet is the savior of secondhand and independent bookstores, and a handy tool for book browsers--as well as small booksellers. Gove begins:

Sometimes I can arrange only a few minutes to indulge my vice. Sometimes I get up to an hour. The longer I have the more enjoyable the release, but being a man I can still get satisfaction out of a few snatched moments. I can’t say I’m proud, but at least my wife knows all about it now. I can’t say she approves, but she knows that boys will be boys. Which is why she’s prepared to tolerate me straying ... into second-hand bookshops.

If a week goes by without me spending some time in a bookshop I grow grumpy and agitated, like a cow that hasn’t been milked. I will purposely plot travel routes to allow time to visit towns that boast superb secondhand bookshops (Midhurst, Deal, Burford and Folkestone all come to mind). I will truncate lunches and arrive late at parties to allow time for visits to bookshops that happen to be in the area in which I’m being entertained. All of this behaviour is quite horrifically selfish and antisocial. But I’m afraid I can’t help it.

He goes on to contend that the Internet can help level the playing field for small bookstores battling to survive beside large merchandizing chains such as the UK’s Tesco:

But while I don’t want to see any small bookshops close (and am indeed euphoric when the best, such as Daunt’s in Marylebone, expand by opening another branch, as they have done recently in Holland Park) I think its wrong to point the finger at the internet. The web has become a catch-all villain for any individual or movement unhappy with trends in modern life, a handy focus for all the discontents of globalisation, up there with Tesco as a disrupter of the settled, the small-scale and human-centred.

But while the jury may be out on Tesco, the internet deserves to be acquitted. Certainly on the count of grievous bodily harm to the book trade. The truth is that the internet now allows many antiquarian and secondhand dealers to flourish even more successfully than before, by allowing them to reach a far larger market than just the passing trade provided by Conservative MPs making time en route to a speaking engagement in Worthing to see if they have any Bulldog Drummond first editions. One of my favourite secondhand bookshops, the Golden Hind in Deal, manages to serve a varied clientele in East Kent, adds lustre to the town’s seafront and keeps a very wide stock to suit all tastes, all supported by a healthy online sales presence.

Now, thanks to the wonderful antiquarian bookfinder site, AbeBooks, it’s possible for secondhand shops to survive in the sorts of towns that Waterstone’s would turn its nose up at, ensuring that the spread of bookstores in this country (the parchment footprint?) is wider than it otherwise would be.

All of this brings me back to my abrupt determination to read something I didn’t have to read. So I left behind my reviewing pile and headed off to book-browse, a task that always cheers me up considerably. And sure enough, I uncovered a remarkably taut and chilling thriller that kept me reading well past my bedtime the other night--and it was a debut novel, to boot.

So where did I find this unexpected gem? Sorry to say that it was at Tesco. The jacket price was £6.99 but Tesco was selling the thing at about half that price, so I grabbed it up, proceeded to the checkpoint, and purchased it along with a pack of cigarettes. Once home again, reading glasses on, coffee brewed, ashtray cleaned, and lamp lit, I launched into this book I knew nothing about. There was no publisher’s press release, no complimentary bookmark inserted in the middle. Three hours later I finally put the novel down and felt so much better, my reading anxiety gone and my mind engaged. Contrary to my fear about any first novel (that its text will be unnecessarily bloated), the book I had chosen on a whim was sharp and judiciously edited, coming in at just 230 pages, with an exciting premise enhanced by expert editing.

And the name of this book? Something in the Sea, by Yves Bonavero. Published by Bloomsbury UK, this novel was originally released last year in hardcover, but it somehow slipped beneath my radar. Which is odd, since I’m usually a sucker for maritime mysteries, having once worked on chemical tankers in the Arabian Gulf. This time around, though, the jacket caught my attention, and the menacing little teaser on the back closed the deal:

It’s a steamy, sultry day of a hot Mediterranean summer. Terence, a rich London lawyer, his beautiful wife Cathy, a doctor, and their young daughter Lucy are relaxing on the yacht that is Terence’s pride and joy.

Suddenly, a storm whips up from nowhere and Terence battles into the night to save the lives of his family. Battered and bruised, they limp into Dubrovnik harbour. Unable to go ashore until daybreak, Cathy is tending to her daughter’s injuries when a large motor-cruiser pulls up alongside the yacht. Its wounded skipper, the enigmatic Kurt, comes aboard the family’s yacht also seeking medical help. As the darkest hours slowly tick by, Terence and Cathy have to listen to Kurt’s disturbing story ...

At sunrise, Terence is a changed man, desperate to hold on to his wife and daughter, and accordingly willing to change his life--a life about which, it transpires, he has been somewhat less than candid. With a harrowing denouement, dripping with suspense, this explosive psychological thriller also is a tragic love story.

Something in the Sea took me about three hours to read--and that was reading slowly, as Bonavero’s tight and claustrophobic plot had me riveted to my chair. I won’t give anything away, except to say that I guessed the ending long before the final chapter, but this short work takes in another twist as its pages run out. The climax is sad, but in an odd way uplifting. I came away from this novel feeling energized and entertained, but also rather pleased with himself for having found a minor masterpiece without the commercial come-ons that usually accompany every book I read. And it seems I’m not the only one who enjoyed this novel.

It didn’t take much digging to find information about author Bonavero. As the Oxford Times reported last year:

Like many authors who try various careers before they become full-time writers, Yves Bonavero has an eclectic CV. In his case, however, you can’t really see the writing replacing the other careers--it probably wouldn’t be as lucrative or as interesting.

French by birth and education, he came to England 30 years ago at the age of 23 and never left. He worked in the City of London for 14 years, ending as chief executive of a financial conglomerate, then left to spend more time with his family and pursue other interests.

One of these was to become an undergraduate at Oxford University, the same year as his oldest child Olivier. Here, he studied German and philosophy for three years while also running a film company. Now back working in finance, he’s also found time to write his first novel. ...

After achieving a first-class degree in 1999, Yves thought about doing a doctorate in philosophy, but his application was rejected. “I was reduced to the other side of my degree, which was literature, and that led me to write the book.” It was a toss-up which language to use. “I was more familiar with nautical terms in English than in French, so I decided to write it in English,” he said.

Given his work commitments, where does the book fit into his life? “It’s my reward for all the rest of my hard work,” he said. It’s so rewarding, in fact, that he’s writing another.

To think, I never would have discovered Bonavero and Something in the Sea, had I not let serendipity take hold of my reading future. This was book-buying pretty much the way it used to be, without handy Amazon leads to more novels one might like, based on previous buying habits, and without any effort to seek out an era-defining work or one that I might have to judge for an award somewhere down the road. This was, in other words, book-buying without a ’Net. I’d almost forgotten what a pleasure that can be.