New nephews and nieces are forever being born into Alex’s family. Engagements and weddings areconstantly being celebrated; add to that birthdays and graduations and christenings, and it’s rare that a month goes by without what some might consider fairly epic family news. Consequently, each piece of that news feels slightly less epic than it might do to others. He’d be in a permanent state of rapture if he allowed himself to get too emotionally involved in each event. And that wouldn’t do for his state of mind, or for the level-headedness he needs in order to create quality work.
‘Yes.’
‘Step-niece? Half-niece? Niece-niece?’
Alex’s friends are more interested than he is in making these distinctions, fascinated as they are by his somewhat comically large family. Now that they are all adults, it would be churlish to make distinctions between those of his siblings who shared both parents pre-divorce, the siblings who came into his life fully formed once each of his parents remarried, and the siblings who were born thereafter. He’s lived with all of them at various times. Wiped the tears and put plasters on the grazed knees of all of them, changed and bounced the youngest to sleep. Baby Elizabeth is technically a step-niece, but this could not be less relevant. Cradling her tiny body last week, he had felt no less protective or proud than a month earlier when his nephew Oliver had been born to Alex’s technically full-sister Susannah.
‘I lose track,’ he says, playing into the familiar joke of his university friends and signalling, he hopes, that these distinctions are irrelevant.
‘Fair enough.’ Nathan gestures to a cluster of armchairs in the opposite corner of his office. ‘Sit, sit.’
On the low table in the midst of the armchairs sits a distressingly high stack of dazzlingly white printed paper. He doesn’t remember his novel beingthislong.
Nathan clears his throat. ‘So,’ he begins, and Alex feels his heart rate increasing again, a bead of sweat making its way down the centre of his back. ‘How do you feel about this book?’
Alex doesn’t think it matters much howhefeels. He’s not particularly interested in discussing that. He wants to know how Nathan feels or, rather, what he thinks. But he plays along.
‘I’m just glad it’s finished,’ he says, trying for the easy laugh, not wanting to give anything away until he can tailor his response to Nathan’s opinion.
‘But beyond that?’ It’s clear that Nathan isn’t going to let him get away with glib evasiveness. His family is one thing; their work together is another.
As Nathan well knows, Alex has found this book harder to write than the others. Perhaps the pressure of his literary success has finally caught up with him. After all, Alex’s career path has been an unusually smooth one so far: a critically acclaimed debut; the sophomore slump successfully vanquished and the third book a triumph, longlisted for a couple of admittedly minor prizes and selling like the proverbial hot cakes after a mention inThe Guardian’s summer reading recommendations. The other shoe was bound to drop sometime.
‘I’d like to hear whatyouthink about it,’ Alex says.
‘I think …’ The pause tells him all he needs to know. Nathan was the one to call this meeting; he’s had ampletime to figure out what to say. If he’s still unsure how to phrase it, something must be very wrong. ‘I think it’s quite … dense.’
‘Rich and complex?’
‘There is definitely richness and complexity,’ Nathan says. The care with which he is framing each sentence is the opposite of reassuring. ‘But it is also quite heavy.’
Alex imagines the sound his manuscript would make if it were dropped from a great height – or even a relatively small one. It would land with a greatthonk.
‘I see.’
‘Your novels all have depth, Alex. They all have emotional resonance, wonderful characterisation, and an exploration of the issues facing today’s society.’
Alex nods. While pleasing to hear, this is not news. Not for nothing has he been called ‘the Millennial Jonathan Franzen’, after all.
‘But they also all have wit, and warmth, and a lightness of touch. This one feels …’ Nathan trails off, no doubt hoping Alex can fill in the blanks for himself. But Alex refuses to make this easy for him. ‘Feels … ?’
‘Well, somewhat lacking in those areas.’
Alex can feel his own shoulders slumping. He has worked so hard on this book – harder than on any of the others, and for much longer. It’s been four years since his last hit. A couple of years after his third book, fans started idly wondering on social media – and sometimes messaging him to ask – when his next one would be coming. A year after that, a Google Alert drew his attention to a journalist’s throwaway comment: ‘It may be that we have seen the last of Alex Maxwell, brilliantthough his writing was.’ And now nobody seems to wonder anymore. The literary world has moved on, has found new idols to worship, new books for the beach, new tellers of epic family stories with serious messages but alightness of touch. They’re assuming, perhaps, that Alex has given all that he had to give and that three novels is the limit. He had been assuming the opposite: that he was merely getting started.
‘I see,’ Alex says now.
To be fair, it is not easy to write about a plane crash with wit and a levity. It is even less easy when, at night, your dreams begin to fill with images of your own family on a plane, different combinations surviving, others having to make do with a forever changed life. Until now, the complexity but also the love of his family have always been an inspiration for his exploration of relational themes. This time around, though, it seems more of a hindrance. He doesn’t know what’s changed. Perhaps his therapist will tell him. Or perhaps his therapist will nod and smile and politely ask,But how does that make you feel?It’s enough to make Alex shudder.
‘I have a solution for you, though,’ Nathan says brightly.
They’ve tried several solutions together already, in the course of drafting this book, with Alex fighting every day with the blank page, only to find that what he’s written is … well, stodgy at best. They’ve brainstormed; they’ve gone for long walks in the sun shine and shorter walks in the rain; Nathan has recommended books that discuss narrative techniquesand novels that exemplify those techniques, and Alex has read the ones which he didn’t find frightfully patronising. Nathan has tried chivvying Alex along and he’s tried giving him space. He’s suggested plot points and added helpful comments in the margins of the occasional chapter that Alex sent him to ask if it was landing right (no pun intended, he has been careful to add). Yet the result of all of this is a less than satisfying novel. Yes, it’s only a first draft – and a first draft’s only job is to exist – but still, Alex cantell. And so, apparently, can Nathan. Besides, it’s not a first draft in the true sense: in the four years he has been working on this novel, Alex has tinkered, rewritten, deleted, inserted. He’s edited as he’s gone along. This is just the first draft thatNathanis seeing in its entirety.
‘Before you start working on my editorial suggestions, I want you to try something different. Something – maybe a little unorthodox?’
Alex feels his frown deepening. He is a proponent of the orthodox, of doing things properly, in time-honoured ways. He is not a proponent of change. But he takes a deep breath and prepares to hear Nathan out. He is, after all, not unreasonable.
‘The solution is about to walk through the door, actually. She’s a brilliant writer, with different sensibilities to yours. She’ll help you inject some levity into the book. Some romance, even.’ Alex takes a deep breath. Romance? He knows, of course, what’s selling right now, and that readers have always yearned for love stories: hence, Jane Austen’s perennial success, for example. But musteverythingbe about romance? Beforehe has processed this, let alone had time to argue, he registers in quick succession: a knock, a bright:Come in, and what must surely be an apparition. Because there, improbably, inexplicably, is the girl from the bookshop.
