Back
by popular demand, Australia’s second annual Books
Alive promotion — a two-week, federally-funded,
book-buying bonanza — kicked off last month as Australian
Minister for the Arts and Sport Rod Kemp officially
pronounced the campaign’s motto: “lose yourself in a
book and find yourself in a bookstore.” During the two
week period ending August 15, Aussie bibliophiles lined
up to bring home one of six bestselling books (chosen
by a panel of retailers, publishers, and government
officials) for just A$5, with the purchase of any book
from a participating bookstore. For the indecisive at
heart, Books Alive issued a keepsake booklet listing
50 Books You Must Own. “We want to make sure
that everyone buys a book during Books Alive and this
booklet provides great ideas to help readers take advantage”
of the offer, said Books Alive chair Sandra Yates.
As an added bonus this year, Kmart and Target
stores doled out copies of Gabrielle Lord’s classic
Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing for free to customers
who purchased her latest psychological thriller Spiking
the Girl. In a move to reach new readers, 50 cents
from every Books Alive book sold was donated to the
Smith Family literacy programs, student2student
(which helps to develop the literacy skills of disadvantaged
children by providing them with books and learning support)
and Books For Christmas (an initiative that provides
books to disadvantaged children at Christmas time).
With more than 90% of all book retailers participating
(that’s approximately 800) and more than 7,000 people
in attendance at 90-plus Books Alive-related public
events, Project Director Brett Osmond is pleased
with how the campaign went overall. Still, he admitted
that there is room for improvement. “The impact on sales
is not as evident as we would have liked. This may be
a factor of the range of books on offer. It also may
be an indication that the offer itself is not compelling
enough to motivate customers to enter the category.”
He added that the amount of high-profile publicity in
the press could be improved. “Advertising alone is not
usually enough to motivate consumers to buy a book;
they need that third-party recommendation that positive
publicity provides.”
Moving
on, in the mythical yet vividly real Tuscan village
of Colle (reminiscent of Gabriel García Marquez’s
iconic locale Macondo), the stories of two very different
families unfold and eventually intertwine against a
backdrop of violence and oppression in Ugo Riccarelli’s
2004 Premio Strega-winning novel The Perfect
Sorrow. First he follows the anarchist actions of
the Maestro, who arrived from Sapri in the late nineteenth
century, and of his children and grandchildren who have
names evocative of the revolutionary milieu in which
the book is set, like Liberty, Ideal, and Mikhail. The
accompanying story is that of the Bertarellis, a family
of animal traders who, for generations, have borne the
names of Homeric heroes and whose favorite pastime is
reading The Iliad and The Odyssey by the
fireside. Caught up in a frantic quest for wealth and
power (with the exception of the narrator, Annina),
the Bertarellis fall victim to the tragedy of epidemic,
and the brutality of WWI as well as the eventual Nazi
occupation. This “fascinating blend of chronicle and
fairytale” forms a “great fresco which tells the story
of life,” a life which Annina characterizes as filled
with nothing but “perfect sorrow.” Rights have been
sold to Hanser (Germany), Plon (France),
Maeva (Spain), De Arbeiderspers (Holland),
Kastaniotis (Greece), and Hakibbutz (Israel).
Contact Emanuela Canali at Mondadori.
Budding
Czech author Petra Hulová explores a family tree
with more than a few knots in the bark in her first
novel Memory of My Grandmother. A family saga
told by various female narrators in the first person,
the book depicts the trials and tribulations of members
of a family of herdsmen in Mongolia (a locale of personal
significance to Hulová, who traveled there several years
ago). At the heart of the story is Dzaja, who describes
a childhood spent in the Gobi desert doing odd jobs,
taking care of her younger sister, and riding on horseback
with her sisters and father Tüleg. When their grandmother
dies, Tüleg tells his daughters about her pure Mongolian
roots and formally asks his eldest daughter Magi to
name her first-born daughter Dolgorma, after her grandmother.
Dzaja and her other sister Nara look on as their father
grows closer to Magi, and it is only a matter of time
before they discover that they are not his biological
daughters. Born from passionate affairs between their
mother and a Chinese man, followed by a Russian door-to-door
sardine salesman, Dzaja and Nara are soon condemned
as mongrels by the pure Mongols who bully them at school
and in their community. Following a fatal horseriding
accident involving Magi, the two girls are shipped off
to relatives and eventually find themselves laboring
in a family-run house of ill repute. Dzaja finds herself
pregnant and the story resumes when her daughter, Dolgorma,
describes her own account of alienation from her family.
“An impressive novel” with a “strong element of surprise,”
Hulová’s debut has been sold to Europakiado (Hungary),
Editions d’Olivier-Seuil (France), and Prometheus
(Holland). Contact Edgar de Bruin at Pluh.
Dubbed
“the next queen of crime” in Sweden, Camilla Läckberg
has created a gem of a mystery “on par with Liza
Marklund” with her second book The Preacher.
Early one summer morning, a young boy sets off to play
at King’s Crevice in Fjällbacka. The fun doesn’t last
long as he happens upon the body of a naked lady staring
up at him. The real mystery begins after the police
rule the death a homicide, when they find beneath the
body the skeletons of two women who had disappeared
in the 1970s. Packed with “great psychological insight,”
the book has been sold to People’s Press (Denmark)
and Gyldendal Norsk (Norway).
Also in
Sweden, Anna Jansson, a nurse with a knack for
composition (her accomplishments include setting the
poems of Nils Ferlin to music) examines the dangers
of online chatting in her latest book, Dreams from
Snow. A 14-year-old girl disappears on her way home
from a late night at school and her body is found in
the forest the next day. Detective Maria Wern is assigned
the unpleasant task of informing her father, who is
a priest in Kronviken. When another girl disappears,
panic spreads and the town begins to look for scapegoats,
setting their sights on a suspicious young man who had
visited the vicarage and who has been seen following
the girls when he’s not cruising cyberspace. Jansson
has been published in Denmark (Fremad), Finland
(Gummerus), Germany (Rowohlt), Holland
(Van Buuren), and film rights are being negotiated.
Contact Bengt Nordin.
