At first glance, Ian McEwan seems an unlikely representative of the multiracial, multicultural Britain that's emerged in the last 20 years. He's white, middle-aged and studied writing under Malcolm Bradbury at the University of East Anglia, Britain's equivalent of the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Yet his novels contain recurrent themes of stark and disfiguring violence that shatter any preconceptions that English life is cozy. This edgy quality hasn't impeded his success in Britain, where he's now considered the country's finest living novelist—or in America, where Amsterdam, his Booker Prize—winning novel of 1998, has sold more than 200,000 copies in paperback, and 2002's Atonement has sold nearly five times that number, hard/soft. His new novel, Saturday, which is already appearing on bestseller lists in the U.K., seems likely to do as well when published here on March 22.
McEwan's success reflects an American taste for anxious, urban fiction that's a far cry from the kind of undramatic and intelligent novel that the English used to be known for. Courtney Hodell, who has been an editor at Fourth Estate on both sides of the Atlantic, is clear about this: "There's a traditional English novel of what I would call 'quiet reportage' that doesn't work anymore; a traditional middle-class literary novel of manners and social life." Ian McEwan is blunter still: "It's dead."
In an increasingly global publishing world, Britain's most commercially successful novelists can have some confidence about their sales in America, particularly if they've won Britain's most prestigious and publicity-generating award, the Booker Prize. Take Alan Hollinghurst, a decidedly literary novelist whose most recent novel, The Line of Beauty, prompted only modest expectations from his American publisher and a first printing of fewer than 10,000 copies. Since he won the Booker last autumn, however, the house has shipped more than 70,000 copies.
Though there are other prestigious literary awards in Britain, such as the Whitbread Prize and the Orange Prize, only the Booker has been able to capture trans-Atlantic imagination and sales. It's helped by its confinement to fiction (the Whitbread includes a bewildering hodge-podge of categories; the Orange Prize is limited to women writers) and by a televised awards ceremony. While the Booker's impact has been significant for several decades, it's hardly a foolproof marketing tool. Who now remembers the 1985 winner, Keri Hulme's The Bone People (Penguin)? And the 2003 winner, D.B.C. Pierre's Vernon God Little (Canongate), which netted 35,000 in hardcover, was far less successful than its predecessor in 2002, Yann Martel's Life of Pi (Harcourt), which recently topped the two million mark in total U.S. sales. Pierre's book may have suffered in the U.S. precisely for its lack of exotic foreignness. Its rough-hewn, satiric take on life in Texas struck some American readers familiar with the real place as a ludicrous caricature. (Tellingly, its chief dissenting critic in the U.K., Times literary editor Erica Wagner, is herself American).
Is Nationalism Anathema?
Particularly for literary novels, hype in the U.K. inevitably plays a role in what gets published here, according to Canongate publisher Jamie Byng. Without it, "the market in America seems to be harder than it ever has been for literary fiction. Sadly, authors aren't being built the way they were in the past," he said. Others are more upbeat, like British agent Clare Alexander, formerly publisher of Viking U.K. and editor-in-chief at Macmillan, who is finding "a lot of confidence in fiction in the American market right now."
Certainly, American readers have been as enthusiastic as British ones for Alexander's client Mark Haddon's crossover hit, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, a quirky story about a young man with Asperger's Syndrome that has sold more than million copies in the U.K. and 1.2 million copies here. But its U.S. publisher, Steve Rubin at Doubleday, fiercely resists any effort to label it as an "English" book: "It's the freshest, most heartbreaking book I've read in years, but it is completely universal. It could come out of anywhere. To make a big deal out of which country a book like that comes from is ridiculous." Bloomsbury publisher Karen Rinaldi agreed: "American readers don't tend to nationalize their authors. If you asked them what nationality Mark Haddon was, they wouldn't know."
So does that mean U.K. books that succeed here must transcend national identity? British publisher Ursula Mackenzie of Time Warner thinks so: "If you overtly say 'this is about an English experience,' it will not work as well." British books that do best in the U.S. tend to have titles that are both are self-explanatory and stress their empathic themes, she explained. "Joanna Trollope started to work better in America when she began to get fantastic titles—Other People's Children tells you right away what's inside. The same is true for Elizabeth Buchan's Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman [Viking, 2003] and Elizabeth Noble's The Reading Group [HarperPerennial, Jan.]. These titles are saying what's universal about them, whether it's a universal character or universal situation." Others aren't so sure. Andrew Franklin, founder and publisher of Profile Books, the publisher of Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves is dismissive: "Claiming a book has universal appeal after it's sold well universally is pure tautology."
The Advantage of a Pedigree
Englishness—or to be precise, Britishness, since that includes Scotland and Wales—is a key feature of the historical fiction now having its time in the American sun. Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is the most recent example of a genre—historical fiction—that translates brilliantly from the U.K.: Bloomsbury's Rinaldi has shipped more than 400,000 copies since its publication in September 2004. Clarke is one of a handful of British historical novelists who sell strongly in the United States: Sarah Dunant, Philippa Gregory and Sarah Waters have established strong followings here, as have novels such as The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber.
In a genre where Britishness seems almost a requirement, these new writers are changing the genre's reputation for purple prose and pulpy plots. The result, according to Courtney Hodell, is that "a sophisticated readership is returning to historical fiction, understanding that it's not something you have to be embarrassed about reading." Less sophisticated practitioners, like Catherine Cookson, fare less well. That kind of rural rags-to-rags saga (known to its editors as "clogs and shawls" stories) rarely transfer as effectively anymore.
There is, however, clearly such a thing as being too British. Jonathan Coe is a highly respected novelist whose work has figured on the U.K. bestseller lists, but he has yet to achieve the same breakthrough in the United States, despite strong backing from Knopf—which will publish his forthcoming novel, The Closed Circle (May)—and Vintage. His novel The Rotters' Club (Vintage, 2003), which follows the lives of a group of Birmingham schoolboys growing up in the 1970s, is rife with slang and events like the IRA bombings that quickly lose resonance when they leave English shores. Coe's other novels—notably What a Carve Up!, published here as The Winshaw Legacy (Vintage, 1996)—also offer detailed satirical portraits of Britain in the last half of the 20th century that didn't catch on with American readers. Yet Coe is a mega-hit in France and Italy, perhaps, according to his U.K. editor, Penguin's Tony Lacey, "because they really think England's like that."
There are still a few pockets of readers who prefer the kind of old-fashioned view of England depicted James Herriot's soppy and satisfying tales of life as a Yorkshire vet. Among works with this lingering appeal, John Mortimer's Rumpole series, about the shrewd and curmudgeonly criminal barrister in London's courts, have long been favorites. The most recent book, Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders, has sold an impressive 40,000 copies in hardcover for Viking since its publication in November. In a similar vein, P.D. James's improbably literate policeman Alleyn (he writes poetry in his spare time) has many U.S. followers.
U.K. works in more determinedly noir mode also almost invariably flop, however. Doubleday's Rubin said it's because "British detectives work better here on television, in shows like Prime Suspect and Cracker." In Tony Lacey's view, it's because "U.K. noir is so influenced by American writing in the genre that it always sounds like pastiche. Philip Marlowe in Cheltenham just doesn't work."
The advantages of a British pedigree have never been clearer than in chick lit, a genre that crystallized with Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding. Though it seems hard to believe after U.S. sales of more than two million copies, Pam Dorman, Bridget's American editor at Putnam, admitted that "before we published it, there was definitely concern about its Englishness." But in the end, "Englishness was part of this very cool world in the novel."
Though many in the U.K. see the genre as largely played out, the American market still embraces the best British practitioners. Jane Green, for example, is repeatedly cited as a writer whose qualities transcend the genre's formulas. As Dorman says, "She has that universality. The Other Woman is about mothers-in-law, and any married woman can relate to that. It doesn't matter if it's set in London or Connecticut." And as the original chick-lit writers grow older, new voices step in to address its new concerns, among them Cecilia Ahern, the daughter of Ireland's prime minister.
The Empire's New Clothes
In nonfiction, dressing up in English garb can also be an advantage. That's certainly the case with the three jaunty guides to good taste in dress by English journalists Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine published by Riverhead. Their latest effort, What You Wear Can Change Your Life, reached #3 on Amazon in its first week on sale, while previous titles have hit the New York Timesbestseller list. Interestingly, the text was altered for the American edition, but the photos remained the same, even though some of the brands aren't available over here.
Bill Shinker, who runs Penguin's Gotham Books imprint, has also had happy experiences leaving British books just as they are. After acquiring American rights to Eats, Shoot & Leaves by Lynne Truss, he decided not to Americanize the text: "We felt that would have gutted the book. And all of its lovely humor would have been lost. The point is, it's not really a guide to punctuation as much as a conversation about it." His gamble has certainly paid off: Eats, Shoots & Leaves (2004) has sold more than 1.1 million copies and occupied a place on the New York Times bestseller list for 44 weeks.
Shinker, who was first alerted to Eats, Shoots & Leaves by a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal, thinks U.S. and British tastes are more likely to converge now that media coverage is so international. But Canongate's Byng thinks the result is often lamentable: "Book publishing has been affected by the way the media has pursued an obsession with celebrity. People become obsessed with bestsellers just as they are obsessed by a celebrity culture that is the most vapid culture imaginable."
Particularly in nonfiction, that convergence has its limits in areas such as sports and business biographies, where interest tends to be parochial. But even in these specialized fields, media coverage can create some unexpected successes, since satellite and cable channels can give an American golf instructor like Dave Pelz a British following.
History is probably the strongest category for U.K. imports, though Courtney Hodell noted that "you have to work to make sense of it for the American reader—re-edit it slightly, give it a new title, add an introduction by a well-known American historian." Softer, leisure fields now also play well. "English food used to be an oxymoron," as Bill Shinker put it, but Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver are reinventing that image. Tellingly, books by the very British but distinctly unglamorous cook Delia Smith have not traveled so successfully, despite her near-ubiquity on BBC television.
In children's publishing, the fortunes of British titles in the U.S. are decidedly mixed. Sally Gritten, a veteran children's publisher now running the children's division at Harper Collins U.K., said bluntly, "In fiction, things are converging; in story books they're diverging." A British aptitude for fantasy continues to send blockbusters America's way, as Harry Potter continues to enjoy the success of a truly international brand. For Gritten, who is American, the blend of surface British traits with common human elements is key to the Potter books' success. The film adaptations have been obvious triggers for Harry Potter's continuing dominance, as well as older classics such as The Lord of the Rings. One to watch for later this year is C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which will be released as a feature film by Disney next December. Tastes in picture books, however, tend to be "very culture-specific," Gritten said. "Very few work both ways, and we sell America fewer and fewer of them."
Readers' tastes in the U.S. and U.K. remain fickle and highly individualistic. But what's clear is that many British books are succeeding here, often because of their U.K. origins, not despite them. Some argue that Britain has become hip to American cultural arbiters, but Bloomsbury's Rinaldi is skeptical: "If it's called 'hip,' then that means it's not what people think it is. Hip to me sounds 'shallow.' I mean, is Susanna Clarke hip?"
Rosenheim is an American living in England. His novel, Stillriver, was published by Random House U.K. in 2004.
