“13 RUE THERESE is a puzzle-novel and gave me the same fizzy satisfaction as completing a Sunday crossword. It will light up your brain and your heart.”
–David Ebershoff, author of THE 19TH WIFE
Pretty spiff, no? This here is my first blurb. I hadn’t even known the publisher was gathering them when I received this, since galleys aren’t out yet. I will get typset pages at the end of next week; I’ll have three weeks to turn them around like I did the copyedits. Then the galleys will materialize on August 6, and the book will start to look like a book! There will be much squeeing.
Other good news: the London Book Fair has borne fruit. 13 rue Thérèse sold in Russia, Poland, and France. On top of the previous UK and Italy sales, that is five foreign markets so far. Sweet. I hope more are forthcoming; I love the idea of having a nice stack of the same book differently iterated, as I love the idea of not being able to read my own transmogrified prose.
A special Godspeed goes out to the French translator, who will have to translate my translations of French letters that are reproduced in the text. Good luck with that. Since a lot of the metafiction in the novel happens in the way Trevor chooses to edit and translate those letters, the French version of the novel will present a huge tension. The target language will be the same as the original, making the changes especially naked, and also making it obvious that Trevor himself was translated back. This will make the translator extremely and unusually visible. I am not opposed to the translator playing around with this bizarre situation, like maybe adding his own set of weird footnotes. We’ll have to see. It makes my brain tremble to fathom it.
Speaking of translation, did you know that in England, book blurbs are called “puffs?” I find that word both apt and adorable. Plus it makes me kind of hungry, it makes me think of Cheez Doodles. Nom nom. Cheez Doodles for my ego. More please.
Meanwhile I’ve been telling my husband that I’m going to bust some heads if no critic calls my prose “luminous.” Ooooh, let me tell you one of my most depraved fantasies… It is to write a terrible book, I mean horrid–the vilest excrescence my suffering body could ever push from itself–and then have it printed with ink expressed from firefly abdomens so that the prose would quite literally be luminous. Aaaaah I am so perverted. Maybe in a previous life I knew Huysmans. Maybe in a previous life I was Huysmans. Did you know that towards the end of his life, he became a huge Catholic? That too, I find both apt and adorable.
Huysmans would approve of this. It is definitely in the decadent spirit.
Elena Mauli Shapiro 