Crap Looking Books #7: Nicci Gerrard's Things We Knew Were True

Initially, Nicci Gerrard's Things We Knew Were True comes across as a rather obvious woman's book. We know this because of the abundance of pink on the cover. We know this because of the ladies dresser complete with pink flowers, pink lipstick, pink make-up dust and a pink-lined compact mirror. They're all in front of pink wallpaper. The author's name and book title are in a soft inoffensive font, while the reviews are in- that's right- pink.


Amazingly, this isn't the worst thing about the cover. No, the worst thing is the publisher's favourite review, so lovingly plastered at the top of the pinkness:

#FF8888, am I right?

"A very clever book about female sexual desire, with a secret ending."

This tells me two things. Firstly, the book has an unexpected ending. Secondly, the book is so light and insubstantial that it requires telegraphing the ending on the cover in order to pique and keep readers interests. 

So before even opening this novel I expected the cliché pink tropes of "ladies literature"... fainting, romance, indecision, dress-shopping ...erm... quilt-making... and I expected none of it to matter because the ending was going to be so cataclysmic and different.

Well... thankfully this is one of those instances when I couldn't be more wrong.

The book doesn't feel feminine or ladylike in any respect. yes, there are a lot of female characters, all dealing with growing pains or the dramas of their twilight years, but there is nothing specifically gendered about what they go through. In fact all the genders in the book could be inverted, or replaced with a commune of homosocial/homosexual individuals, and the story would still make just as much sense.

One thing I found hard to get over was the utterly bizarre ritual of what can only be described as chaperoned sex parties, where kids went to drink and kiss and indulge each other sexually, then were picked up by cheerful beaming parents in the early hours of the morning. I'm not sure what Nicci Gerrard's childhood was like, but these parties seemed like some weird forced breeding plan straight out of dystopian science fiction, and they certainly don't scan with the shocked and stoic attitudes towards sex the adults show in later chapters. 


As the end of the book drew near all I could think about was the "secret ending" and what it would mean for the story. Five pages from the end my hands were shaking with anticipation. Either that or I had to wee. Two sentences... one sentence.. two words.. a word... oh. Either someone's been ripping pages out of my copy, or the "secret ending" was missing entirely. 

Perhaps the "secret ending" was just the ending, hidden as it was at the back of the book, a place the publishers didn't expect any readers to actually reach.

This is exactly the kind of gem that I'm glad Crap Looking Books occasionally coughs up- a good read in a bad cover.. but it's also a little infuriating. I would go as far to say that the cover has absolutely nothing to do with the book, and inasmuch could easily deter a whole slew of readers that might potentially enjoy it.

It's a book that's both depressingly uplifting and upliftingly depressing. A pointless but pointed story of how generations of the same family make the same mistakes as they embark on the great journey of just living one day after the other.

It's The Crow Road with less men and a much smaller ensemble, and despite it's banality I can't hate on it because it's exactly the kind of thing that l myself write. 

Nick
xx