Hodder picks up Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs

18.01.10 Catherine Neilan in The Bookseller

Hodder has won a "hard-fought battle", beating off bids from Penguin, Random House and Little, Brown, to secure world rights to a novel about "marriage, motherhood, children and work".

Publishing director Carolyn Mays paid a six-figure sum for the book, entitled The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs, by Christina Hopkinson, in a deal brokered by Abner Stein agent Arabella Stein.

Mays described it as "the funniest, most acutely-observed novel about marriage and motherhood, children and work that I have read in many years", which was "very much speaking to wives and mothers about the daily stress we are under to keep everything ticking along".

She explained: "It's about the irritation and frustration of daily life, and about whether it's possible to move through it and start again. Every 10 years one of these books hits a nerve. The last was Allison Pearson's I Don't Know How She Does It (Chatto & Windus), which was a number one bestseller in the UK and a New York Times bestseller in hardcover and paperback. I really think The Pile of Stuff . . . will be the next. Every woman who reads it will want to tell their friends about it—because it will make them laugh."

Mays added: "It is a different way of looking at what the Americans call ‘The Mommy Wars' —she is not saying that working mothers should fight against stay-at-home mothers, it is about mothers who are under pressure from all sides."

Hodder will publish in spring 2011 as a B--format hardcover, and in 2012 in paperback. Since buying world rights, Hodder has sold the book into America, Brazil, Germany and -