Something strange is going on at The New York Times Book Review. Over the past two months, three debut novels have netted cover reviews, most recently Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End. That’s more than in the average year. And two were paperbacks. Editor Sam Tanenhaus says, “It’s not a policy thing, it’s a matter of serendipity.” But “if you can put a paperback original first novel on the cover, that is like orgasm time for us.” Still, does a cover slot guarantee future success?
THE BOOK
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
8/13/06
Reviewed by Liesl Schillinger
PRE-REVIEW BUZZ
Big advance, and preemptive backlash from other writers—leading Schillinger to implore, “Don’t hate her because she’s beautiful.”
LEAST-FAVORABLE PART OF THE REVIEW
Only to repeat (and dismiss) accusations that Pessl suffered from “Hot Young Author Chick Syndrome.”
SALES
64,000 in hardcover. Publisher says it will print 500,000 paperbacks.
CAREER TRAJECTORY
More backlash (Gawker said she was only “book hot”), but Scott Rudin picked up film rights. A novel-in-progress hasn’t been sold yet.
THE BOOK
Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel
8/28/05
Reviewed by Jay McInerney
PRE-REVIEW BUZZ
Publishers Weekly called it “annoying but accomplished.” And Michiko Kakutani had already reviewed it positively—in the voice of Holden Caulfield.
LEAST-FAVORABLE PART OF THE REVIEW
“Indecision seems at times to have been constructed from a kit in which all the ingredients of the modern American bildungsroman have been laid out methodically.”
SALES
52,000
CAREER TRAJECTORY
Has kept busy with lit mag n+1, but recently seemed bothered enough by lack of respect (and sales?) to strike back at a writer who called Indecision “chick lit.”
THE BOOK
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
9/7/03
Reviewed by Michael Gorra
PRE-REVIEW BUZZ
Well, Ali had already been labeled “the next Zadie Smith.”
LEAST-FAVORABLE PART OF THE REVIEW
At the end, “the book finally slips into soft focus”—but Gorra notes that Dickens made the same rookie mistake in Oliver Twist.
SALES
1 million worldwide.
CAREER TRAJECTORY
The movie wrapped (though marred by protests from South Asian Brits). But second book, Alentejo Blue, had mixed reception, paltry sales.
THE BOOK
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
4/14/02
Reviewed by Francine Prose
PRE-REVIEW BUZZ
Half-million-dollar advance, excerpt in The New Yorker, already optioned by Liev Schreiber—and Foer had just turned 25.
LEAST-FAVORABLE PART OF THE REVIEW
“Big chunks of the book start to crumble in the last 50 pages or so. The Trachimbrod novel spins out into the ozone.”
SALES
500,000
CAREER TRAJECTORY
His 9/11 novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, polarized critics with its postmodern pyrotechnics but still sold 200,000 copies.
THE BOOK
Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles
2/24/02
Reviewed by John Vernon
PRE-REVIEW BUZZ
Top billing for the poet’s novel may have had more to do with its similarities to the recently published Cold Mountain than to its own buzz.
LEAST-FAVORABLE PART OF THE REVIEW
“[T]he narrative setup contains its longueurs,” such as “an obstacle course of redundancies.”
SALES
175,000
CAREER TRAJECTORY
Became a favorite with book clubs (including Good Morning America’s); optioned for a movie, still unmade. Second novel, Stormy Weather, out May 1.
THE BOOK
The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri
1/28/01
Reviewed by Michael Gorra
PRE-REVIEW BUZZ
A boost from mentor Michael Cunningham got the math professor an agent, a New Yorker excerpt, and a $350,000 deal.
LEAST-FAVORABLE PART OF THE REVIEW
“Suri seems content … to let his characters remain comic types, depicted with a verve that doesn’t reveal their depths so much as it does their shallows.”
SALES
200,000
CAREER TRAJECTORY
Suri’s planned trilogy is taking a while: The second book, The Age of Shiva, is due next January.
THE BOOK
Jim the Boy by Tony Earley
6/11/00
Reviewed by Walter Kirn
PRE-REVIEW BUZZ
Praise from Granta for his 1994 story collection made his first novel a good-size event among the lit in-crowd.
LEAST-FAVORABLE PART OF THE REVIEW
“A soulful old black man who may as well be Uncle Remus pops up once or twice, usually peeling an apple … ”
SALES
129,000
CAREER TRAJECTORY
Another slow one: The Blue Star is due in ’08. TheTimes said his 2001 essay collection, Somehow Form a Family, could be called “Somehow Earn a Living.”
THE BOOK
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
4/30/00
Reviewed by Anthony Quinn
PRE-REVIEW BUZZ
As with Foer, a cover in book-clogged April means you’re playing with the big boys. Was already a British best seller—at only 24.
LEAST-FAVORABLE PART OF THE REVIEW
As with Foer, the ending: “One wishes that a firmer editorial hand had steered it away from its overeager braiding of plot lines.”
SALES
1.5 million worldwide.
CAREER TRAJECTORY
The mother of a thousand “next Zadie Smiths” had a lot to live up to herself: Autograph Man disappointed, but On Beauty (mostly) didn’t.
THE BOOK
The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman by Bruce Robinson
2/28/99
Reviewed by Patrick McGrath
PRE-REVIEW BUZZ
Though Robinson was a screenwriter-director (The Killing Fields, Withnail and I), his profane study of adolescence was hardly an obvious pick.
LEAST-FAVORABLE PART OF THE REVIEW
“Those who have reservations, however, about gross, robust humor of the Rabelaisian variety—and scatology in particular—should steer clear.”
SALES
35,000
CAREER TRAJECTORY
Robinson has stuck to his day job. His next movie, The Rum Diary, based on a Hunter S. Thompson novel, is set to begin shooting this year, with Johnny Depp.