Letter

This has been the busiest week of the year in the shop, made busier this year because of our new online facility whereby readers can order a book a month for six months or a year, either for themselves or a friend.  As we pack up the first book we always feel rather envious of the recipient having six, or twelve, good reads coming through their letterbox during 2008.  But there are still wonderful books to surprise and absorb even us.  We have just been overwhelmed by Earth and High Heaven, a 1944 Canadian novel by Gwethalyn Graham.  It was a huge success at the time and won the Governor General’s Literary Award.  If anyone reading this would like to get a copy from abe.com and tell me what they think, I should be very grateful.  The Canadian journalist who gave it to us knew we would love it, and we do – but would it reprint?

Of course that raises the vexed question of what we mean by would it reprint?  We do have a leaflet in the shop, and online, called ‘How We Choose our Books’, and it is a combination of factors: readability, good writing, interest, integrity.  These are all rather vague concepts, but the upshot is that for us to want to expend time, energy and financial resources on a book it must be beautifully written; it must, always, be unputdownable; it must be interesting and perceptive and eye-opening; and it must be entertaining.  It must also grab us in some indefinable way, and some writers – obviously – grab some people and others do not.  Thus we personally (like AS Byatt, who has written about this better than we can) are not Barbara Pym fans; the lack, we know, is ours, but as we often declare, boringly, one can only run a small publishing house with passion and that means passion for one’s books.  There are some women writers that – try as we might – we cannot love.  Happily others do love them and ensure they are in print.

There cannot have been many people who have not loved Cranford, the last episode of which was shown last night.  One cannot really praise it highly enough.  The next television treat will be Ballet Shoes (which has the same scriptwriter, Heidi Thomas).  Perhaps when we return to the office after the New Year there will be a run on Saplings, the Ballet Shoes for grown-ups.  Now that would make a wonderful television serial.  But unfortunately television producers love remakes (the recent A Room with a View, the forthcoming Brideshead Revisited) even though we all know the plot and are thus reduced to admiring the set and the costumes rather than becoming thoroughly engaged by the delight of not knowing what is going to happen next.  When, oh when, will Dorothy Whipple get her turn?