First Impressions

Have I ever bought a book on the basis of its cover? Absolutely. In fact, a gorgeous cover will always grab me. Erin Morgenstern’s THE NIGHT CIRCUS is just one such instance - I couldn’t resist its silhouetted Victorian figures, silver stars and embossed lettering. It turned out that the cover captured the spirit of the book brilliantly and I've never regretted that impulse buy.

Another example is Alan Bennett’s THE UNCOMMON READER. I fell for this little book the minute I saw its white and gold dust jacket emblazoned with a raised gold crown (yes, I do like tactile covers). Admittedly, my purchase was influenced by the author's name. But, most of all, I loved the title.

Which leads me to the real subject of this article – just how important are titles in ‘hooking’ a potential reader? Those of you who are regular visitors to my blog will know that I’ve discussed this in an earlier article, and I still feel the same way. A great title is paramount.

As a writer, I can’t settle into my manuscript until I have the perfect name for it.  During the first few weeks in the gestation of MR CHEN'S EMPORIUM, the book was known by another name, a perfectly acceptable one, but unspectacular nonetheless. When the right title came to me, I knew instantly that it was ‘the one’. And after the title was firmly in place, gracing the first page and the footer, I felt free to get on with the story.

In the case of THE JADE WIDOW, I had the name months before I started writing the book. Actually, I suspect that was one reason why the writing went so smoothly. As for my forthcoming novel, A PLACE OF HER OWN, I have a confession to make. Over the past three years there has been a series of working titles, none of which ever fully satisfied me. At one stage my husband asked, ‘What are you calling it this week?’ Finally I resorted to dubbing it ‘Number 3’. Oh dear.

So I went back to basics. What is my book about, I asked myself. The answer came easily. It’s about finding a safe place, a refuge, a bolthole. And suddenly I knew the word ‘place’ had to be in the title because it has so many levels of meaning.

First and foremost, there’s the physical sense of the word. A real location. For my female protagonist, Angie Wallace, it's a charming Victorian house with high gables, fancy bargeboards and dormer windows, surrounded by rolling lawns and a lavender garden. She has a very personal investment in this place, having renovated it herself.  And she has developed a special bond with one of its nineteenth-century inhabitants, a young woman by the name of Amy Duncan Chen, who suffered the sudden loss of her husband, just as Angie did more than a century later.

Then there are the psychological connotations of the word 'place', the sense of ‘being in a good place’ emotionally, or its converse, being 'all over the place'. Angie Wallace experiences both states of mind but I won't say any more for fear of giving away too much.

A PLACE OF HER OWN will be released by Random House Australia on May 1. By the way, you don't need to have read MR CHEN to pick up the story. Although this book features characters from the modern-day thread of MR CHEN'S EMPORIUM, it's most definitely a stand-alone novel. 

Deborah O’Brien

January 2014