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The Truth About Lisa Jewell by Will Brooker (view source)
Revision as of 08:47, 13 July 2022
, 08:47, 13 July 2022no edit summary
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Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most successful British authors I've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, one of the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the two closer and closer together. The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the words of her [[The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell|latest book ]] she was reciting, and her being in a ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at the author events I get to attend), but pulled Brooker, a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the rabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the published author's life, working to make a success of the latest title, and struggling with the next in line. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is the result.
This has a lot to handle, from the twenty books and three very distinct genres Jewell has written in before, to all the ins and outs of her coping with the demands on her next thriller. I can't say Brooker makes her the most appealing author, however well-admired she must be, and clearly how rarefied she must be to deserve this volume in hand. Suffice to say I am glad he liked picking through her descriptions of women's clothing, decor as character and so on (one bloke defined apparently because he shops with two in-house M&S labels?!) – I doubt I would ever be so forgiving about such minutiae. If I had read her from the start I don't know if I'd have loved her career progression, or if I'd feel her large jumps in genre output kind of belittled what she'd enjoyed success with before.