During my last trip to the library, a book propped up at the end of shelf caught my eye. Our librarians tease patrons like that. I took Kelly Simmons' novel, Standing Still, off the shelf and flipped it over to read the back cover. That's my normal routine if I'm not looking for a particular title or author: spine, front cover, back cover, front inside blurb, info. about the author. Then I crack the book open and read a random paragraph or two somewhere from the middle of the book. If the plot seems intriguing and I haven't been offended by that point, I give the book a try. Unlike many readers who will complete a book regardless, if I see the story isn't going anywhere once I start reading, I'll abandon it and look for another good read.
Standing Still may be the first novel I've brought home without checking the inside cover or cracking the book open. Those few paragraphs on the back thoroughly hooked me. "There is a man in my daughter's room. . . I don't dare cast my eyes in my daughter's direction, don't want to point her out to him. . . He stares at me. I stare back. . . He scoops her up. . . 'Take me,' I say. 'Take me instead.' I'm ashamed to admit I wasn't completely relieved when he did."
I offered the book to my husband and asked him to read the back matter. "Wow," he said as he finished. My response, too. I knew I had a delicious few hours ahead when I finally made opportunity to read.
This morning when I moved the book to dust the table supporting it, I read the inside front cover. Whoa. Wait a minute. The main character is a woman? Where did I get the idea the first person story teller would be a man? I opened the book in the middle and read a paragraph or two. She is having conversations with someone she refers to as capital H "He." Oh. This is a Christian novel? She's dialoging with God?
I looked at the front cover again. How did I miss the drawing of a woman sitting on a sofa? (And as I read the book later, I wondered how the illustrator missed the color of the main character's night gown -- unless the illustrator is color blind and can't tell pink from green.) I flipped the book open again. On page 184, I read this dialog: "'I hate you,' I say. He laughs and gets off the bed. . . . The deadbolt locks and the Cutlass beckons. I don't see Him after that, but I imagine Him on the phone, talking to His boss, filling him in. . . " Oh. She has given her kidnapper the only name she has and honors him with a capitalization.
Compare the excerpt from the back matter above with the first few sentences of the inside blurb: "Journalist and suburban mom Claire Cooper suffers from panic disorder. Most of her anxieties seem irrational, nothing that can't be fixed with the help of some Xanax. But late one stormy summer night. . . " The first person excerpt is much more intriguing. If I had read "Claire Cooper suffers from panic disorder" as my introduction to the novel, my response would have been, "So?"
As a writer, I've been reminded of a few things.
- Librarians are our friends. If they like a book, they'll let you know in some way that hey, this is a good read. Maybe they'll pull the book out so you can skip step 1, read the spine, and see the front cover.
- A good first sentence is valuable. "There is a man in my daughter's room." I am a mother. I feel Claire's panic. I catch my breath. I can't exhale till I finish several paragraphs.
- It is perfectly acceptable to bend the rules. Capital H He makes sense here just as putting some dialog in italics does in The Last Time They Met, by Anita Shreve. I loved the quirkiness of Shreve's book, and my writing partner hated it.
- And of course, you can't tell a book by its cover or its back cover or its blurb or a few paragraphs mid-way through. To know what's in a book, you have to actually read it -- which I plan to do, as soon as I wash the dishes, pick up the mess I made last night when I decided to clean out a closet in the living room, write a few letters, finish this post, go to the grocery store, cook supper. You know, daily things.
Standing Still has given me reason to pause. Why did I assume the main character is a man? And why haven't I read the book yet if the excerpt seemed so intriguing? Pondering these questions with novel in hand, the answer to the last question surfaces. Ah. The back cover is the color of chocolate. That's what makes Claire Cooper's story a treat I want to savor.
