The Printer's Devil - not its original title, as we learnt at tonight's launch dinner - is a rewarding, historical, London-set adventure in the tradition of Joan Aiken. What I particularly like about the book is that it is pitched fairly and squarely at the 8-11 audience. It is good to have a substantial, quality children's novel that you can recommend unreservedly to primary age children without worrying that it is only suitable for the very oldest or most literate amongst them. In that connection it was revealing to hear the author unashamedly admitting that it was Enid Blyton who first engaged him as a young boy, before he moved on to Aiken and Leon Garfield. Another likeable characteristic of the book is its willingness to embrace elements that more cautious authors might have rejected as too cliched. The dog, Lash, leaps to mind.
As a first novel, The Printer's Devil is impressive. The plot twists in its second half did begin to leave me reeling and - perhaps this is because of my own gender - I resented the major revelation when it came, and still fail to see the point of it, other than a fear (on the part of the author? the publisher? the sellers?) that the book might have insufficiently wide appeal without it. Unfortunately, I was sitting too far down the dinner table to ask the author himself about this, and had to leave to catch a train before the dessert musical chairs. But I very much enjoyed sitting next to a red-shirted Justin Somper, who was on fine form, sharing off-the-record stories about author events, and giving me a little advance news of his forthcoming 'punchy' short fiction pirate-vampires sequence, sheduled to begin appearing early next summer.
Jill Slotover (Financial Times) informed me, apropos of a discussion about marketing & publicity 'extras', she had received a bunch of roses earlier in the day, along with a proof of Hilary McKay's next book. Texting home from the train, I found that no such bouquet had, as yet, been left at ACHUKA's door.
Earlier, I had arrived at Smiths, by chance, with Dinah Hall of the Sunday Telegraph. As we walked through pounding bars in search of the private dining room, she remarked, "Aren't you glad not to be young any more?" And then, both admiring David Frankland's cover art, she wondered, "Do you think that's because it makes us nostalgic for books we remember?" During the short dinner speeches the pounding from the neighbouring bars became increasingly insistent, and posed the question, "Is there still an audience for this kind of novel (a book that could have been written in 1964, 1954 even, as easily as 2004)? We shall see. The book has already gone into a second printing but that, I suspect, is mostly the result of speculative interest from bookdealers and collectors, rather than from a genuine rush of early sales.
