Undercover
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday June 13, 2009
IMAGE PUSHES THETASTE BOUNDARIESWomen's body parts legs, breasts, torso, usually headless and often naked have been a fashionable image on book covers for years. Justine Ettler's 1995 bestseller The River Ophelia fuelled the trend and I wrote in 1997 that it dominated the Australian book design awards. Now Text Publishing has gone further with the Australian cover of Nick Cave's new novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, coming out in August.Publisher Michael Heyward says the image of a spread-eagled young woman suits Cave's story about a libidinous salesman and his son. It is by the distinguished Australian-born photographer Polly Borland whose subjects include the Queen and it was part of an exhibition Borland held in London and Melbourne last year, coincidentally titled Bunny, about "an extremely tall girl called Gwen". The book of the show includes a poem by Cave (Borland's neighbour in Brighton) and he was, says Heyward, happy to have Borland's image on his cover, which is designed by Chong Weng Ho. (Canongate's British edition uses a more conservative image from the series of a figure in a bunny suit.)Undercover knows of at least one bookseller who is uneasy about displaying the book. Heyward says: "I don't think the image is remotely pornographic. It is visually very striking and it is confronting; but no one is going to be seduced by it. The book itself is also extremely explicit about human behaviour. Some booksellers may feel they don't want to display it in their front window. But it would be disappointing to have a humdrum cover for a Nick Cave novel."Heyward sees no likeness to Bill Henson's photographs of naked adolescents in a Sydney show that was closed by police last year. It was Text that later published David Marr's book The Henson Case and Heyward points out: "There was not one complaint that the photographs were published in a book."TRIBUTE TO A FIGHTERThe death of the respected cancer surgeon Chris O'Brien (pictured) last week is a great loss to Australia and everyone who knew him. However, he lives on as an author. As well as being appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia on Monday, his autobiography, Never Say Die, has been shortlisted for biography of the year in the Australian Book Industry Awards, with I Am Melba by Ann Blainey, Stella Miles Franklin by Jill Roe and The Lucy Family Alphabet by Judith Lucy.Never Say Die, commissioned by a HarperCollins Australia publisher Amruta Slee, has already sold close to 80,000 copies an impressive number. On the news of his death, HarperCollins immediately ordered another printing of 15,000 copies to fill booksellers' orders. Shona Martyn, the publishing director, says a tribute edition will come out later this year with a new cover and extra material written by the calm and organised O'Brien for this purpose.IT'S MUSIC TO A WRITER'S EARSWith Nocturnes, the collection of stories by Kazuo Ishiguro (pictured), on the bestseller list, it is intriguing to imagine a musical based on his beautiful literary novel from 1989, The Remains Of The Day, about the unspoken love between a butler and a housekeeper in an English household during World War II. That's the plan of a London theatre producer, Simon James Collier, and writer-director Chris Loveless and composer Alex Loveless. The successful 1993 film version of the novel starred Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson and a play was once discussed. Ishiguro told London's Telegraph: "I am a big believer in musicals and I see no reason why my novel shouldn't make a good one. Steven Sondheim's A Little Night Music shows you can set an unlikely story to music." The faithful film version, he said, "allows for this version to be a bit more left field. There is comedy in the book and a musical could bring that out more." A film of Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go, starring Keira Knightley, is also in production.www.smh.com.au\undercover
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald