Manuscripts

This article, which was published in The Australian newspaper in January 2006, will explain everything.

“I was instantly gripped by this. It has been several months since I’ve felt so excited by the energy and pace and sheer electricity of someone’s writing. A clever idea, breathtakingly paced and perfectly sustained. And, on top of all this, snort-out-loud-on-the-bus funny. There are so many appealing aspects to the book… [its] ironic, witty, satirical surface, glittering and glorious…”

“It’s brilliant, very funny and ingenious.”

“[The] narrative is inventive, and [the] voice original and often very amusing.”

“Immensely clever and often very funny.”

“[Written with] verve and spirit and confidence.”

“Clever and artful.”

“A talented writer with a gift for satire.”

If you read these quotes on the dust jacket of a new novel, at the very least you’d be intrigued, perhaps you might even buy the book. While the quotes are all actual responses to a manuscript, there will, in all likelihood, never be an actual book to accompany them.

The responses all come from publishing professionals – commissioning editors in Sydney and London, as well as literary agents in New York City – and they relate to a manuscript of mine for which I received an Australia Council literary grant in 2003. Every one of these reactions can be found in a number of letters or emails declining to either represent or publish the manuscript, ‘brilliant, funny and ingenious’ as it is.

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