My Awfully Big Book Club Adventures by Sheena Wilkinson

Book club fiction. I’ve heard the phrase used with a sneer, usually by people, by which I suppose I mean men, who seem to think it denotes women’s, and therefore, in their eyes inferior books. 

                                                              

The first time I heard it used was by my agent, a few years ago, when I first told her I wanted to write adult novels. What sort of novels? she very reasonably asked. I struggled to explain. I knew it wouldn’t be a romance, or a psychological thriller, or a police procedural or any of those handy genres. 

Sort of intelligent, I said. But not pretentious. Thought-provoking. But not experimental. Accessible. Just a – you know – a novel novel. A good story. Well-written. The sort of thing I like to read. 

 

Ah, she said wisely. You mean a book club book.

 

That’s exactly it! I said. 

 

But I struggled to write one: for five years, and two full-length manuscripts, amounting to perhaps twenty drafts between them. These novels were not bad. I would go so far as to say they were quite good. But nobody wanted to publish them. Editors used words like stylish. (But quiet.) Elegant. (But quiet.) Beautifully-written.(But quiet.) 

 

Could you make it more like book club fiction? they suggested helpfully. We know what to do with that. 

Clearly I did not. Maybe it was because I’d never successfully stayed in a book club for more than three books’ worth? Much as I love reading, I’d floundered every time I tried to stick with a group, because if I don’t like a book I never persevere with it. It becomes too much like work, when there are so many books I want to read. Yet I hated being the one who hadn’t read the book. Perhaps if someone started a specific book group – the Mid-Twentieth Century Middlebrow Domestic Novel Book Group, perhaps. Or the Novels Set in Schools Book Group. Or the We Promise There Won’t Be Any Fantasy or Magic Realism Ever Book Group. Then I could commit. 

 

But when I came to write Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau I had an instinct that this book – at last! – might prove popular with book clubs. Its feelgood feminist tone, its blend of wit and grit, above all its sense of community and championing of strong female characters might finally hit the sweet spot? I suggested to my publicist at HarperCollins Ireland that we should run an online competition where one book club could win copies of the book and a visit from me – real or virtual depending on location. I felt rather odd, offering myself as a prize, but as they say in Yorkshire, where the novel is set, Shy bairns get nowt. And as long as one book group entered, it wouldn’t be too embarrassing.

 

Well, lots of groups entered – phew! The winning group was the Belfast-based St Dominic’s Book Group, which has been going for twenty years. Weirdly, I knew one of the members, the poet and memoir writer Maureen Boyle. As we made arrangements for my visit, I decided to contact the other nearby group who had entered to offer a visit to them too. They hadn’t won the free books, but decided they’d be happy to buy the book and have me visit. Some friends in book groups said they might do it, and would I be able to come? The book group in my old village invited me back for old time’s sake. Another group won a voucher for a visit at my book launch. A former colleague organised an event with three of her local groups. A schoolfriend’s sister contacted me: If you’re ever in Worthing… A London friend, whom I’m going to stay with in the summer when I attend the Romantic Novelists' Association conference, said her local group would read Mrs Hart and have me as a guest if I was prepared to be paid in wine and crisps. I’m being paid, I reassured her, by the fact that some people who wouldn’t otherwise have heard of me are going to buy and read my book. 

Somehow I ended up with nine invitations. So far I have been to meetings in houses and halls, in a yacht club, a book shop and a pub. I have been given flowers and notebooks, travelling expenses once, a tote bag, and a lot of tea and cake.

I have met many women readers from 20 to 80-something, and one man. And before anyone says I shouldn't be doing this more-or-less pro bono, let me say: This is not the same as a fee-charging festival paying writers in ‘exposure’: this is a mutually beneficial, informal arrangement between readers and writer. Like the novel, it’s about community and connection. I know perfectly well that people are buying and reading the book who might otherwise not have, and in return, I hope, they are getting the novelty of having the writer to tea. 

Of course, there is always the risk that they hate the book… So far that hasn’t happened, but it's been fascinating to listen to people's discussions: I totally saw that coming. Oh, no, I didn't! I didn't feel I got to know Martha. Really? I felt I knew her very well. And so on. 

In the next few weeks I'm going to be in two Belfast book clubs, one in Worthing and one in London. Who knows where else?