Forgotten Favorites: The Bestseller by Olivia Goldsmith; A Sharply Funny Look Inside The Publishing Industry
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Many hands are involved before a book gets read by the public: authors, editors, publishers, critics, and many others so the book is read, sold, packaged, and hopefully makes it to the top of the New York Times Bestseller List.
Olivia Goldsmith's follow up to her best-selling novel, The First Wives' Club, The Bestseller gives the Reader an inside look to those hands that make a book sell.
The plot focuses on several authors who would sell their mothers, friends, lovers and souls, for a chance to see their names in Kirkus, Publisher's Weekly, and in the hands of every library patron and Barnes and Noble customer.
They are: Opal O'Neil, who is peddling her late daughter, Terry's literary 2,000 page magnum opus, The Duplicity of Man from one publisher to another. Camilla Clapfish, an Englishwoman who pens A Week in Firenze, a sweet story about five middle-aged women on vacation in Italy.
Susann Baker Edmonds, a once-famous romance novelist who is on a grueling book tour (42 cities in six week) to promote her latest floundering work. Judith Gross writes a thriller about infanticide, In Full Knowledge, which her husband, Daniel takes full credit for.
Each of the authors has their stories about the extremes they go through to get their works published which feature equal parts persistence and equal parts having the luck to have an understanding ear.
Opal waits in one waiting room after another hoping to pass Terry's work to a sympathetic editor which she finally does to Emma Ashton, a young idealistic editor. While working as a tour guide in Florence, Camilla is fortunate enough to have a romance with a handsome tourist who turns out to be Emma's brother.
Susann has to deal with promoting her latest to an uninterested fickle public and her daughter who also decides to write a book....about her relationship with Susann. Judith is irate about her husband's deception, infidelity, building ego, and theft of her royalties which she gets revenge in a satisfying epic manner. The authors are creative, bright, ambitious, and likable in their persistence in getting their works published.
Besides the authors, we also get an inside look at the publishers inside the fictional Davis & Dash which is the recipient of these works.
There is the aforementioned Emma who is the heart and soul of the book and is the only one who genuinely cares about the new authors like Opal (and Terry), Judith, and Camilla. Pam Mantiss, the self-absorbed and alcoholic Editor-in-Chief who has the insufferable task of ghost writing a tacky sexy thriller for Peet Traynor, their recently deceased top selling male author. Finally there's Gerald Ochs Davis AKA GOD, the second generation publisher who always wanted to write and write he does: a trashy novel based on a family scandal. With the neuroses and peccadilloes of the Davis & Dash staff, it's a miracle that decisions get made let alone books get published.
Since this book was published in 1997, it's definitely a book of it's time. Amazon.com only gets a scant mention. Many of the smaller companies panic about getting swallowed by bigger companies. (A very real situation in '90's publishing.) Famous names are dropped who were giants in the late 20th century writing world such as Danielle Steel, John Grisham, Michael Crichton, and Stephen King. (Even Goldsmith herself and her book, First Wives' Club get as shout-out.)
It would be interesting to wonder what a 21st century version of this book would be like. Authors would be swindled by self-publishing sites. Editors would stress about social media platforms and how many downloads the E-Books are getting. You just know one of the authors would be a British single mum beginning a fantasy series about a boy wizard.
But The Bestseller is a great novel that takes the Reader behind the scenes of their favorite books and learn about what it takes to put them in their hands.
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