How to snare your reader: the secret of a good blurb

It sounds disingenuous, not to say dis-respectful, but as a writer of 40 books, give or take, I never read blurbs. I can’t bear to. I love stories and am terrified of them being spoiled. There is no obvious twist or murderer so clearly signposted that I will ever try to guess them as I read. I never look at the end first. One of the great joys of books (and of life, more or less the same thing) is being happily surprised.

I did accidentally read the blurb of Karen Jay Fowler’s superb We are All Completely Beside Ourselves, which gave away the (gorgeous) twist in the first line. I can’t be the only person this drove to distraction, as the blurb on the new edition now reads:

Rosemary’s young, just at college, and she’s decided not to tell anyone a thing about her family. So we’re not going to tell you too much either: you’ll have to find out for yourselves, round about page 77, what it is that makes her unhappy family unlike any other.

And I do glance at jacket quotes, just to make sure nobody is using any of my great book turn-offs – ‘limpid prose’ being one, ‘immense lyrical powers of description’ being another. I once reviewed a novel where the famous person quoting for it, obviously under some duress from the publishers, gave: ‘This is a story, well told’ – which, frankly, one might consider something of a minimum.

As for my own blurbs, years ago I used to write them myself as a ‘Dear Reader’, before what Louise Willder calls the ‘Innocentification’ of the world (after the smoothie), and trying to address a stranger informally became like how a toilet talks to you on a Virgin train.

None of this detracts from how utterly enjoyable and charming this book is, and I now consider myself well schooled, and more convinced than ever that I am right to leave blurbing in the excellent professional hands of Little, Brown.