Rosie Alison's debut novel, The Very Thought of You, was shortlisted for the Orange prize despite not getting a single review in a British national newspaper. So how has her book fared since?
In March, Rosie Alison's debut novel, The Very Thought of You, was shortlisted for the Orange prize despite not garnering a single review in a British national newspaper. At the time, she said she was relieved by the absence of coverage: "It's a very sincere, heartfelt book . . . easy for a cynic to write it off in a few dismissive lines."
Alison didn't win the Orange but her book has since been sold to 10 countries abroad, including China, and should, according to her publishers, have sold 100,000 copies by Christmas ? with no posters, no advertising.
"It's all been word-of-mouth," Alison says. "I'm quite a guarded, buttoned-up kind of person, and it took courage to write a book like this. I think I assumed it would simply fall into the black hole of first novels. I really never expected it to take off."
Nor did she expect "the letters, the emails from strangers ? this interconnected world of readers that opens up, in festivals, book groups, libraries". The feedback has led her to understand "what kind of book I'd written. It's about longing, and heartache, and how we deal with that." She admits it hasn't appealed to everyone: "Those who are pragmatic about love get annoyed. It only really works for people who are prepared to tune into it."
If a book is prize-listed, "You do tend to get some form of backlash. I've sometimes found that a bit unnerving ? people saying they hate your book. But I'm reconciled to it now. I've tried not to let it diminish the pleasure of seeing my book find its readership." (Particular pleasure, she says, came from seeing a young blogger in far-off Singapore feel "enough ownership" of a passage to cite it online, and call it My Story.)
Most of all, the experience has been "immensely motivating. I'm already working on something else, a contemporary love story about two strangers who meet on the London underground."
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