Tayari's Blog: So, What's Your Book About?
Posted by TayariJones on May 20, 2009 09:18 AM
Filed under
The Writing Life
How do you go about talking about a novel in a way that A) does justice to the project and B) makes it sound interesting. This is coming up for me a lot since many friendly people here on MV say, "So what are you up to while you're here." I say that I am working on a book and they say "tell me about it." I have this sort of short hand for The Silver Girl. I say: It's about bigamy. The lying cheating kind, not the religious kind.
That usually does the trick, but I am not sure it is a fair description of the novel. It's really about the daughters of a bigamist, one of whom infiltrates the life of the other under false pretenses. But that's sort of a lot to say, and it makes the whole thing sound trashy, when I am going to for a thoughtful meditation on the nature of family and the stubbornness of self-delusion. But see, that sounds boring.
I have run across two young writers who describe their books in terms of TV shows and movies. I don't want to use their specific examples, but they would say something like "My book is a cross between LoveJones and The Shining." I don't know if it is a good idea to talk about your book as the illegitimate offspring of other people's work. Every story is unique. If you can talk about it truthfully in terms of other books or movies, you probably need to rethink things.
At the end of the day, I am not sure you can really describe a novel in ten or so words in a way that really tells the truth. The indescribable part is the art, the magic of it. Think about Beloved. Can you imagine Toni Morrison at Yaddo, trying to describe her masterpiece-in-process: It's about a ex-slave woman who kills her baby. Then the baby comes back and tries to take her man. It's kind of like Roots meets "Fatal Attraction".
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There are 3 comments on "So, What's Your Book About?". If you'd like to leave a comment, click here to jump down to the comments entry form.
Comment #1, by Jackie ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tayarijones.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
OK, that made me chuckle, that last line about Beloved. Maybe you have to describe the book based on the audience. There might be a contingent out there who wouldn't read Beloved if it was described as a literary novel, but would dash off to the nearest B&N if they thought it was Roots meets Fatal Attraction. At least it would drive them to the novel and maybe something good would come of it.
In a society where attention spans are short and are competing with Twitter/texting etc, you may have to arouse the interest in the (paying) reader in whatever way works while they are in the moment with you.
May 20, 2009 01:16 PM
Comment #2, by Bethany
If I wasn't supposed to laugh out loud at the "Roots meets Fatal Attraction" thing, I apologize. I totally did.
May 20, 2009 01:19 PM
Comment #3, by Michael Fischer
Here's how I plan to answer this question:
"What's your book about?"
"Stuff."
May 20, 2009 04:18 PM