Bird in Hand - Christina Baker Kline [53]
After a few interviews and signings, she realized that she was being asked the same questions over and over: How much of this novel is based on your life? Was your mother an alcoholic? What do your parents think of the book? Now and then there’d be an interviewer, usually from a local National Public Radio station, who had actually read the book and asked questions that were a pleasure to answer, about the writing process, structural decisions, themes or connections that Claire might not even have been aware of herself. But these were rare. More often, she felt that she was running an obstacle course, trying to avoid pitfalls without making a fool of herself, or of the person who asked the question.
As the tour progressed, she’d begun to sense that the serendipitous things that happen to some authors—splashy reviews in national publications, the public endorsement of the book by a celebrity writer (or any type of celebrity, for that matter), some kind of controversy, a Zeitgeisty appeal that tapped into a general feeling or national mood—weren’t happening to her, though nobody would tell her that directly. The cognitive dissonance of this experience—the need to promote the book by conveying a sense of its popularity (Dreamworks! Entertainment Weekly!) while getting the distinct impression that this popularity was artificially hyped—was unsettling. It was hard to discern what was real and what was propaganda, and perhaps even harder because she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know.
She called Jami, back in New York, for a reality check, and got a party line instead—“Everyone’s really happy with the book! National reviews don’t matter, it’s the local reviews people read! And besides, your book is all over the Internet. It’s still early, relax!” But she knew it wasn’t really true. First novels have the shelf life of Wonder Bread, and what she was beginning to understand was that for most books the sell-by date was actually the publication date. The important time was before that, when bookstores placed their orders and long-lead glossy magazines decided whether your book was worth ink. Buzz was created then. If not, the publisher picked up and moved on to the next promising first novel. Unless a book got a lucky break, it was old news a month after it came out.
It had been three weeks since the publication date. There were two national reviews, in People and Entertainment Weekly; the New York Times hadn’t bothered. The southern papers were enthusiastic; they ran profiles and reviews and included Claire’s book in roundups with other first novelists writing about the South. Bluestone didn’t have an independent bookstore, but there was a Borders, with a Starbucks, no less, the next town over. The book had been featured in the Bluestone Record—a profile and review, side by side, with a big publicity photo of Claire and flattering references to Bluestone’s “hometown girl.” The profile was little more than a whitewashed account of Claire’s years in Bluestone and a verbatim recitation of the half-truths and puffery of her publicity release. The review, on the other hand, by a snarky former high school classmate, was full of insinuations about her motives, cast in a dimly positive light. It was clear that the reviewer had been told she needed to be nice but couldn’t resist getting in a few jabs: “One wonders why Ms. Ellis felt the need to confirm northern liberals’ stereotypes