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People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, on-sale 12/30/08

As an editor, I live with written material a loooong time before it finds its way to other readers as a book. And it has become routine for me to feel a tinge of something I’ve recently identified as envy when I know publication is imminent and someone (hopefully lots of someones) is about to crack one of these fantastic suckers open. To sit down with a book whose voice and story you will take in as a finished work for the first time is a hugely appealing position to be in. Most readers are none the wiser about first drafts and the ideas that went nowhere, the battles I lost, the problems I missed the first time, and so had to creep back, hat in hand, begging for just one last spin around the revision block. The first-timer’s reading experience is pure and I envy that. I really do. But who am I kidding. I prize my front row seat more than anything. Whatever redundancies I endure and failings I’m responsible for, likewise I have the ridiculous privilege of witnessing the ideas that blossomed into something more captivating and original than I could have imagined, the story threads that become deeply embedded and essential, rather than exposed seams, the basting stitches easily pulled out, the plot twists that pay off, the characters who become more fully alive from one draft to the next. These satisfactions are real and lasting.

And yet I wouldn’t mind getting a do-over every once in awhile. I wouldn’t mind going to the store to buy People of the Book, the latest novel by Geraldine Brooks, with its velvety black cover and its stunning lapis and gold butterfly wing, and then hurry home, rush in, tell everyone to simmer down, mom’s trying to READ here, close the door, and curl up somewhere and begin. For the first time. To read that first line, full of attitude and toughness – you know this woman is a neurotic badass right from the start, and feel what I, as this book’s editor know is true, that I’m in for a good trip with a writer whose books (Year of Wonders and March) I have loved, and to wonder, to really NOT KNOW, just what will happen next… Well, that’s a little fantasy that could put me out of business. So I will remain in this necessary purgatory, the wishing to know less and the loving that I know so much. To you readers out there in the world who have the opportunity to read People of the Book for the first time when it appears in its Penguin paperback edition on December 30th, just know there’s an editor in here who is both grateful, and a little bit jealous.

Posted by: Molly Stern, Editorial Director of Fiction, Executive Editor, Viking Penguin

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