The Novel ‘Silent Wife’ Benefits From Success of ‘Gone Girl’
By JULIE BOSMAN - The New York Times - Published: August 4, 2013
The blockbuster novel of last summer was “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn, a dark, psychological thriller about a broken marriage, told by warring spouses in alternating chapters. This summer, there is “The Silent Wife” by A. S. A. Harrison, a sleeper hit that happens to answer to the same description.
John Massey
A. S. A. Harrison
But “The Silent Wife” has a striking story behind its publication that makes it an unlikely best seller: In a season that has been dominated by brand-name authors — Khaled Hosseini, Stephen King and J. K. Rowling — Ms. Harrison was a Toronto writer and an unknown, who had never published a novel before. Her book was released as a paperback original, not a hardcover, which is the preferred, more expensive format chosen when a publisher wants a book to make a big splash.
And in a real-life tragic twist, Ms. Harrison died of cancer in April, only weeks before her book was published. She was 65.
The book, a slim 326-page story about a well-off Chicago couple whose 20-year union crumbles and veers into cheating, duplicity and violence, will make its debut on The New York Times’s combined print and e-book best-seller list next week at No. 11.
Kathryn Court, the publisher of Penguin Books, said that an editor, Tara Singh, had acquired “The Silent Wife” in the spring of 2012, months before “Gone Girl” hurtled onto hardcover best-seller lists, where it has remained for more than a year.
Timing can be everything in publishing, and every now and then, a book comes along that dovetails perfectly to capture some of the excitement stirred up by a similar title. “We bought the book and loved it,” Ms. Court said. “Then the ‘Gone Girl’ thing happened. It was like throwing a can of petrol on the bonfire.”
Last year, the heavy-breathing novels “Bared to You” and “Entwined With You,” both by Sylvia Day, were marketed as natural follow-ups to the hugely best-selling “Fifty Shades” series, which left readers hungry for more erotica.
After many readers sped through “Gone Girl,” with its prickly story of a marriage gone awry, they wanted something else like it. Ian Kern, manager of the Mysterious Bookshop in TriBeCa, said the similarity of Ms. Harrison’s book was “a huge selling point” and that he has prominently displayed “The Silent Wife” on the front table.
“Even if the publisher is wrong that it’s the next ‘Gone Girl,’ ” he said, “I’ll still pay pretty close attention when I see that tag line.”
1 comment:
Well written and touching. What a tragedy for this author to pass of cancer, especially at a time when her book was to be published.
I think there is a lot to be said for timing, among other things that make a book compete in the market.
-Dilettantish Reader
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