School of Hard
Knocks
Argentinian
Aristocrats, More DaVinci,
Writers with
Good Noses
FROM PUBLISHING TRENDS (APRIL
2005)
As if
high school reunions don't already conjure up enough
fear and trepidation, Dutch author Simone van
der Vlugt (best known for her YA novels) has
brought this confluence of teenage angst to a whole
new level in her first foray into adult fiction with
The Reunion. Sabine's life is suddenly turned on its
head when she receives an announcement about her reunion.
She isn't worried about how she looks, or how successful
(or not) her life has been, but instead hones in on
an event of her youth that continues to haunt her --
the disappearance of her classmate Isabel. Once her
best friend, Isabel morphed into the most popular girl
in the school, and dropped Sabine like a sack of potatoes.
But it's Sabine who still feels guilty because she knows
Isabel would not have vanished if she had cycled home
with her that fateful day. Now, 10 years later, the
gnawing feeling of guilt continues to grow as multiplying
fragments of memory come back to her. Sabine roots around
in the past and comes closer and closer to the true,
terrifying story behind Isabel's disappearance. “
“ A hugely exciting literary thriller, presenting
intriguing themes, such as the suppression of traumatic
events, the competition between teenagers, and also
between colleagues, love, and above all, friendship.”
“An asset to the Dutch thriller genre, Van der
Vlugt certainly measures up to Nicci French.”
Contact Chris Herschdorfer at Ambo/Anthos
(Holland).
Also in Holland,
a brother and sister author duo who famously dislike
each other's work, have teamed up to write “two
books in one” in Murder & Manslaughter.In
Doeschka Meijsing's half, Andrea is
visiting her brother Timbeer, whom she hasn't seen for
years, on the peninsula of Ortigia in Sicily. The brother
and sister are the middle children in a family of five
in which sibling rivalry is the rule. Much like the
authors, Timbeer and Andrea are also both writers and
thus an even more potent rivalry has developed between
them. Holed up in Timbeer's apartment for days on end,
Andrea stews about a solemn childhood pledge she made
to kill her brother, while Timbeer works furiously writing
a book about a homicide case in the north of Italy (call
it the OJ trial of its day). Andrea's short visit will
lead to a surprising and unpredictable development in
her relationship with her brother. In Geerten
Meijsing 's half, Manslaughter, he refutes
everything that his sister has written about him. Fascinated
by another family, in which a woman is the sole suspect
in the murder of her child, Timbeer tries to prove her
innocence from afar. The press has offered high praise
for Geerten as a “writer with a good nose, a heart
and amazingly beautiful penmanship,” while Doeschka
was nominated for the Libris Literature Award
for her previous novel, 100% Chemistry, “a short,
sparkling chronicle of four generations of women,”
which is under option in France. Contact Floortje
Jansen at Querido (Holland).
The shifty-eyed
Mona Lisa makes another grand entrance
into the literary world in Mart ín Caparr
ós’ Argentinian Planeta
Award-winning novel Valfierno. As if we haven't
heard the name enough, Da Vinci's famous lady has disappeared
from the Louvre in 1911, and the police are
hunting through every nook and cranny of France to catch
the culprit. The story revolves around the prime suspect,
the Marquis of Valfierno, an Argentinian aristocrat
“with a criminal mind that is both warped and
brilliant.” The product of an impoverished childhood,
he is unjustly accused of being the ringleader of an
anarchist bombing attempt and is sent to prison. After
his release, he takes up employment at a brothel where
he meets the Frenchman with whom he plots “the
heist of the century.” Caparr ós paints
a portrait of an indelible character who “creates
and recreates himself with a succession of disguises,
infiltrating a high-society world to which he does not
belong, and inventing a prestigious though entirely
bogus name for himself.” Rights have been sold
to Planeta (Brazil) and Ripol
(Russia). Contact Thomas Colchie for
US rights and Mercedes Casanovas (Spain)
for all other rights.
Also in Argentina,
a recently married Agostino leaves Italy at the end
of the nineteenth century for the faraway city of Buenos
Aires in Griselda Gambaro's “breathtaking
story,” The Sea That Brought Us. Once on solid
ground, he meets Luisa, a washerwoman who falls in love
with him and bears him a daughter, Natalia, who turns
out to be as strong as the current that brought her
father to his new land. Suffering and deprived, she
hardens her spirit until she changes her own fate, but
pays a high price in the process. Family ties are put
through the the ringers of the political storms of the
time, the fervor of anarchists and of striking workers.
In her latest novels, she pierces the “luminous
and urgent center of…the most definitive truths
about love, forgetfulness, tenderness, the sick body,
and the loss of recognition.” Contact Gabriela
Adamo of Letras Argentinas
for more information.
Society and
its discontents are also on the march in France this
month. Meet Rudy. He’s not quite thirty and he
works at a plastics plant with Dallas (who has grown
so accustomed to her nickname that she's forgotten her
given name). Both of their lives are thrown into a tailspin
when the plant closes down in G érard
Mordillat's epic, The Living and the Dead.
Woven through this ambitious account of fifty or so
characters is the love story of a young couple carried
along in the stream of contemporary history. Battered
by passion, insurrection and tumultuous revolts, Rudy
and Dallas harbor secrets and struggle to survive in
a town where hardship has torn families apart, set neighbor
against neighbor, and crushed private, social and political
norms. The scramble for financial survival prevails
over human compassion as Mordillat gives a voice to
those who normally are denied the right to speak. Awarded
the Prix RTL-Lire at the Salon
du Livre, the novel is an attempt by Mordillat
(who is a film and documentary maker) to occupy the
territory, which in his opinion, has almost entirely
been deserted by television and cinema - that of dire
realism. Rights are with Charlotte Riegl
of Calmann-Lévy (France).
Finally, following
up on the controversy involving the US Office
of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and its attempt
to censor works from the six countries currently under
trade embargo (see PT, 4/04), Arcade
has published Strange Times, My Dear, the PEN Anthology
of Contemporary Iranian Literature despite the risk
of fine and imprisonment. After teaming up with PEN,
the AAP, and the AAUP
to file suit against the US government, Arcade was issued
a “general license” to “freely engage
in most ordinary publishing activities” involving
countries on America's “enemies list,” but
never received a direct response to the lawsuit. We
salute them.
©2005
Publishing Trends
