A Bed of Scorpions

Just what the world needed, a murderer with a library card.

If this were a crime novel, I thought as I chopped, we’d be on the last chapter.

As we wove through the traffic, I tried to remember if I’d ever read a crime novel where the main preoccupation of the person on the run is the cost of the cab fare. I made a mental note to mention it as a new plot twist.

‘I work for a publisher. We make books.’
‘My sister reads.’ In the same tone you’d say, My sister likes Mongolian throat-singing.
‘It happens. There’s no shame in it. Not even a Twelve-Step Programme that I know of.’

And there’s ID in my bag.’ I gestured towards the policeman who still held it in the hand that wasn’t holding a gun. What the well-dressed copper is wearing this season.

If this had been in a novel and not real life, I would have written in the margin, ‘Symbolism too heavy-handed?’

What we sell is imagination, the possibility of being somewhere else, talking to people who never existed, or died a millennium ago. How you do it, by words on paper, or on an e-reader, or carried through your window by phosphorescent pixies driving chocolate sleighs, shouldn’t matter.

A book works if it means something to the reader. It doesn’t matter if what it means to the reader isn’t what the author intended, or even if it directly contradicts what the author intended. If it speaks to the reader, then it works; if it doesn’t, it’s dead.

If our ancestors could fight the Crimean War without Wi-Fi, seemed to be the consensus, then it must be admirable to continue proudly on without it.

The three of us who had rejected it all agreed that the book had been bollocks when it was offered, and it continued to be bollocks now. If it won the Booker, it would be Booker-winning and financially rewarding bollocks, but you couldn’t acquire books on an I-hate-it-but-maybe-it’ll-win-the-Booker basis.