The Bestseller

by Olivia Goldsmith

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Emma asked. Opal nodded. “I hope you’re as pleased with it as we are.” Pride showed in her young face.

  Opal reached out and took the satisfying heft of the book in her hands. There it was, as perfect as it could have been in any dream.

  “It’s the very first copy we received,” Emma continued. “I…” She paused. “I brought something else as well,” she said, and pulled a bottle of champagne from her tote bag. “There won’t be much for all of us,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting a crowd.”

  “Oh, there will be plenty,” Roberta laughed and retrieved her bottle of bubbly from the refrigerator. “Opal always keeps champagne on ice, just for occasions like this. Emma, why don’t you help me with this?”

  The two women got out glasses while Aiello struggled with the cork. Meanwhile, transfixed, Opal sank onto the daybed and began to reverently thumb through the book. If only Terry…She began to think, then shut that part of her mind firmly. I have done this for her, Opal told herself. It’s not enough, but she would have been glad. And there was something wonderful, truly magical, about the word becoming flesh—well, at least ink and paper—something great about the bulk and smell and corporal reality of the book sitting there in her lap.

  Emma handed her a glass of champagne, and Opal looked up. Her friends already held glasses. “To The Duplicity of Men and to Terry O’Neal,” Emma said. They all drank, though Aiello didn’t seem to relish his.

  “Thank you,” Opal said.

  “Let’s hope it gets the success it deserves,” Emma said.

  “Hardly likely with its placement at the ABA,” Roberta sniffed. “You couldn’t find it, much less buy it.”

  Emma’s smile faded. “Were you there?” she asked. Roberta nodded. “It was too bad. The book deserves more,” Emma agreed.

  “It’s going to get more,” Roberta said and explained her letter-writing plan.

  “That’s great!” Emma said. “It’s just what Duplicity needs. Word of mouth! Terrific.” She paused. “How can I help?”

  “Who do you know who’ll send out letters?” Roberta asked.

  Opal spoke up. “Surely you’ve done enough, Emma,” Opal said. “The book would never have been published if not for you. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No,” Roberta and Emma said together, and they smiled.

  69

  There’s an enormous difference between being a critic and a reviewer. The reviewer reacts to the experience of that book.

  —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

  Judith picked up the extension and listened to Pam Mantiss’s voice. Daniel was in the kitchen, and Judith had been careful not to let the bedroom extension click as she lifted the receiver. Flaubert came to her side and looked up trustfully at her. Judith felt awful—she knew it was wrong to do this, but she simply had to get more information. Now she stood in the bedroom, dripping from the bath and listening in on a conversation she should be having with her editor. So why did she feel so guilty? Flaubert licked at the water on her legs. Daniel had reduced her to this, to sneaking information about her own book.

  “A star,” Pam Mantiss was saying. Was she talking about Daniel? Was he a star already? “You know how many first novels get a star in PW? And have you seen Kirkus?”

  Daniel said he hadn’t. Judith wondered who Kirkus was and looked around the bedroom—as if he might be there. But Pam screeched. “You didn’t see it?” Kirkus was clearly an it, not a who. “I didn’t think so,” she continued. Judith wondered how Pam could be both shocked that Daniel hadn’t seen Kirkus and at the same time expecting that he hadn’t. “It comes out tomorrow,” Pam explained, “but I have an advance sheet. I’m faxing it to you now.”

  Judith could hear the beep of their new fax machine. It was in the hallway, and she desperately wanted to see the review. But she had to hear this conversation. “Read it and weep—for joy,” Pam Mantiss was saying. “And the pricks at Kirkus try so hard to disagree with PW, but they still had to give you a bullet. I’m telling you, advance sales are going to skyrocket. You’ve got to get in to New York,” Pam said, her voice lowering to an even sexier tone. “I’m really hungry. Want to eat?”

  Daniel cleared his throat. “I’ll try,” he said. Judith hung up.

  When she walked into the kitchen followed by the dog, Daniel was greedily devouring the review on the faxed page in front of him. “What’s that?” Judith asked as innocently as she could. Daniel was too busy reading to answer. Judith tightened her hold on her elbows in order not to snatch the paper out of his hands. Kirkus must be some kind of magazine or something. What had it said? What was PW, and what had it said? Judith could barely contain herself.

  She looked at the back of the paper in Daniel’s hand. She’d been reviewed! She almost danced in place, she felt so impatient. Flaubert felt her excitement and began waving his plumed tail. Hadn’t Daniel finished reading it yet? Judith moved beside her husband and took his arm, trying to look over his shoulder, but he didn’t even shift the page to accommodate her. She couldn’t act as if she knew what it was.

  Judith let go of Daniel’s arm and, in return, was handed her review. The page contained short reviews of a few different novels. It wasn’t like the long New York Times reviews she was used to. Her eyes scanned the titles until she found In Full Knowledge.

  Rarely does a first novel open with such power and authority. Twenty-two-year-old Elthea Harris is trying to cope with a boring job, financial problems, and single-motherhood, when she is abandoned by her lover, the third of three men to betray her. This final blow pushes Elthea over the edge, and she murders her three boys.

  Because the grim story is so beautifully drawn, the unimaginable violence appears nearly an understandable response to the patriarchy that has murdered Elthea’s spirit. The author movingly conveys flashbacks to Elthea’s childhood, her father’s suicide, and incidents of molestation by a stepfather.

  But then some of the power of the book fades. Jude Daniel has done an admirable job of shedding light on the darkest parts of a woman’s psyche, but in the last third of the book the plot becomes predictable and the ending trite. Still, the amazing power and clarity of the writing, the illumination of a woman in this much pain, is more than worth the price of admission. Jude Daniel is no Chekhov, but this is an unusually strong, highly commercial first novel.

  Judith looked up to find Daniel staring at her. “But this isn’t good,” Judith said. “This isn’t a good review.” Flaubert, looking up at the two of them, stilled his tail.

  Daniel smiled at her in an infuriating way. “It is, actually. It’s got what we call ‘money quotes’ in it.” Judith noted the we.

  Gently Daniel took the page from Judith and began to read aloud. “‘Daniel has done an admirable job of shedding light on the darkest parts of a woman’s psyche,’” He looked up and smiled at Judith. “‘Rarely does a first novel open with such power and authority,’” he continued. “We could put both of those excerpts on the back of the jacket. Or in ads. That, along with the PW review—”

  “There was another review?” she asked, as if she didn’t know. “But the book hasn’t even come out.”

  Daniel smiled, his smile so damn condescending. “There are a couple of publications for booksellers,” he explained. “They have to review books before they come out so that bookstores know how to order. Publishers Weekly is the big one.”

  “So they review all books, not just the good ones?” she asked.

  “They review about eighty-five percent of all novels,” Daniel said. Judith wondered where he’d learned this. “For a first novel, an author with no track record, the PW review is critical. My review is a good one.” Daniel went to the hallway and got out his briefcase. He didn’t seem even to notice the scars that the vegetable peeler had made on it. It was as if she couldn’t cause him any pain. “I’ve got to get to the train,” he said, looking at the schedule. “I have a dinner to go to.”

  “Since when?”

>   “Since my review. We’re celebrating because the PW review was so very good. It was given a star, which means it was a notable, maybe an important, book. That star will be worth hundreds, maybe thousands, of advance orders from bookstores. It’s really very important for my career.”

  His career. His review. And he didn’t even show me, Judith thought. He didn’t let me know at all. What else don’t I know? She thought of the checkbook, and the sound of Pam Mantiss’s voice over the phone. She remembered all the phone calls from Cheryl. “May I see the PW review?” she asked, and was embarrassed that her voice came out in a shaky whisper.

  “Sure,” Daniel said casually. “It’s here someplace.” He continued to search through his briefcase. Finally he pulled out a crumpled page.

  Judith had to restrain herself from snatching the review out of his hands. Her eyes ran over it, and phrases—what Daniel would call “money quotes”—jumped out at her.

  “First novels don’t often achieve the authority of voice that this one has.” “The compassion created for a woman who has committed this heinous act is a masterful achievement. Daniel shows how an action so wrong can, at the worst of times, feel so right.” “More than a crime saga, more than a page-turner, the novel, like Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, gives us a heroine whose actions are morally indefensible and self-destructive yet human and understandable to the core.”

  Judith held the page tightly, but her hands began to shake and the tears in her eyes stopped her from what she really wanted to do—go right back to the beginning and read the review over and over again. It was a miracle to her that this person—someone with the power to write a review read by thousands of book buyers—understood. All of those months alone in her little turret room had added up to this, this moment when someone else had read what she had written and had known what she had tried to do with every word; more than that, they had felt what she wanted them to feel. The power of that made it hard for her to breathe, and she felt the tears at the corner of her eyes begin to slide down her cheeks.

  “Daniel, why didn’t you tell me about this? How come I didn’t know?”

  “Oh,” he said. “I meant to. It’s just that I’ve been so busy. There was the ABA, and then planning my book tour—”

  “Daniel, it’s our book. And I didn’t even know that it had been reviewed. What else don’t I know, Daniel?” She stared at him for a few moments, and as he looked back at her she thought that just possibly he might actually tell her the truth, come clean, and be the Daniel of old. But she was wrong, or the moment passed.

  “Judith, you’re blowing this completely out of proportion,” he said. And she realized that she’d lost him.

  70

  The New York Times list is a bunch of crap. They ought to call it the editor’s choice. It sure isn’t based on sales—

  —Howard Stern

  “What do you mean, we’re lost?”

  The limo driver didn’t answer. His name was Biff. Susann should have known not to trust a man over fifty named Biff—or under fifty, for that matter. He didn’t respond. Certainly Biff had heard her. She raised her voice. “What do you mean?” she repeated. “You said you knew the way between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. You said this was your country. How can you be lost?”

  “It’s not so much that I’m lost as much as I don’t know where we are.”

  “Well, there’s a comforting distinction,” Susann snapped.

  “You were the one who wanted to get off Twenty-five,” the driver said accusingly. “Twenty-five would have taken us right into Santa Fe.”

  “Edith wanted to see a pueblo,” Susann explained, not for the first time, and then was irritated with herself for even bothering. As if a Biff deserved a word of explanation. What had the duchess of Windsor said? “Never complain, never explain.” Well, Susann agreed with the second part, but certainly not the first.

  She leaned forward, sliding open the panel beside the seat. Nothing. No ice chest, no drinks, no television. None of the pleasures or comforts she’d been promised. Perfect. “This thing isn’t a limo,” she muttered. “It’s a hearse.”

  “It could be worse,” Edith said.

  “How?” Susann snapped.

  “Well, you could be traveling in a coffin instead of the backseat.”

  Susann laughed. Anne Rice had made a spectacle of herself, starting her last book tour riding in a coffin through downtown New Orleans. Since when were writers sideshows? In Susann’s opinion the only thing bigger than Rice’s royalties was her hunger for publicity. And her bad taste.

  “I haven’t gotten to see a single thing on this trip,” Susann complained.

  “What a lie,” Edith said serenely, knitting away. Damn her nimble fingers! “There have been countless hotel lobbies, bookstores, and radio studios. Not to mention airports. Lots of airports.”

  “I mean a sight. A cultural landmark.” Susann sighed. These first two weeks had been grueling, but Edith had been a gem. Unperturbable, always prepared, she returned phone calls, packed and unpacked, ironed Susann’s clothes when necessary, kept her supplied with bottled water, opened the books for Susann’s signatures, and kept her eye on the huge pile of luggage.

  Susann looked out the tinted window. The light was beginning to fade. The road, a single-lane highway through the desert, was paved, but that didn’t stop the limo from throwing up clouds of dust into the twilight. If Biff didn’t know where they were, why didn’t he stop? She’d have to tell him what to do.

  She was so tired. She’d started the morning at five, done a radio call-in show where they had given away a dozen copies of her book while she answered questions from the locals, including what she thought of the new Albuquerque city manager. As if she knew. Then she’d done two bookstore signings, had lunch with the manager of the New Mexico Borders stores, and as if that weren’t enough, finished up with another signing. It had all been as dreary and tiresome as the previous sixteen stops. The only relief and comfort Susann had was Edith. That was why, when Edith asked to see a pueblo, Susann—who had no interest herself—had asked Biff to oblige.

  Alf had abandoned her almost completely. He hadn’t even called for four days. He was all caught up in the Jude Daniel nonsense. When he did call last night, it was only to tell her that the New York Times had phoned Davis & Dash to verify the title and their summary of her book’s plot, a sign that it was being considered for the list. It wouldn’t be reviewed, of course. Her books never were. But even the Times had to admit that they sold.

  How the Times weighed and balanced its very subjective list was a mystery. Commercial books always got a bad deal. Why, one week, when Howard Stern’s book had sold fourteen thousand copies, it had dropped to second place behind Colin Powell’s, which had only sold three thousand! Alf had managed to worm out the fact that Susann’s book was number seventeen on the hardcover fiction list. That was not as good as she’d hoped, nor as good as it had once been. Until the last two, her books had always zoomed up to number one during their first week in the stores. But she was struggling back from the failure and couldn’t expect to be launched at the number-one spot—although she had secretly hoped for it.

  Number seventeen was a start, but achingly hard to accept, because the Times only published the top fifteen bestsellers. Seventeen was as useless as twenty or fifty or seventy-three. Still, there was plenty of time to hope. Tomorrow they would get the early results from the USA Today list, which reported the top fifty. She’d surely be on that list.

  “It’s getting dark,” Edith said, peering out the window. “I don’t think we’ll be able to see a pueblo anyway.”

  They were driving through a canyon, and though the sun might not have set up above, the floor of the canyon was already dark. “Turn around,” Susann told Biff.

  “Turn around?” the idiot at the wheel repeated.

  “Let’s get back to Twenty-five,” Susann told him. From the rear seat she could see the driver shrug. If his neck wasn’t so thick, she would have li
ked to put her knobby fingers around it and do some of her arthritis exercises.

  Then, as if he had read her thoughts, the driver swerved in a diabolical U-turn, throwing Edith up against Susann and the two of them to the side of the limo. Edith nearly skewered her with a number four needle. Biff had done a wide turn, fishtailed off the road, and now the heavy limo seemed to sink in the soft sand. Biff gained control of the wheel but then gunned the motor. With a sinking heart, Susann heard the whine of a wheel spinning and going nowhere.

  “Oh, shit!” Biff said, and gunned the useless motor once more. Susann looked at Edith, who leaned forward and lifted her knitting bag, which had been thrown to the floor.

  “Don’t worry, I have sandwiches,” Edith told her and patted Susann on the knee.

  71

  I think a book should have a very good chance of earning out or you shouldn’t buy the f—eking book.

  —Roger Straus

  Gerald had just finished going over the advance orders with Pam when she paused. There was nothing for her to be so cheerful about—David Morton had announced his disapproval of last quarter’s results, not only to Gerald but to the press. Still, Pam had been smirking for most of their meeting, and Gerald suspected it was because the Trawley book was already number four on the Times list. An author’s death usually precluded further financial success, except in Peet’s case. In its first week of release, despite his threats and an ultimatum to the the sales force, actual initial orders for Twice in the Papers had barely reached thirty thousand hardcover copies.