This year’s summer flurry of debut novels appears to tick all the booksellers’ boxes.
This year’s summer flurry of debut novels appears to tick all the booksellers’ boxes. There’s the headline grabber, the European bestseller, the wartime melodrama and the quirky romancer. Publishers recognise a good thing when they see it.
60 Years Later is a case in point, having already hit the news pages and caused a buzz of expectation (Windupbird Publishing, £7.99). Flirtatiously spun as a sequel to Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, its author has unsurprisingly opted for a reclusive nom de plume. The jacket announces the arrival of one John David California. The defendant’s name on the lawsuit swiftly dispatched by the real J. D. is Swedish fan Fredrik Colting. Subtitled ‘Coming through the rye’, the book imagines Holden Caulfield, or ‘Mr C’ as Colting cautiously tags him, as an old man waking up in a nursing home.
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