BOOK REVIEWS
Slim 'Seamstress' beauty to hold, joy to read
By Deirdre Donahue
USA Today
Sept. 11 was not a propitious debut date for a slim novel by a first-time Chinese-reared novelist living in France. Yet "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" by Dai Sijie, translated from the French by Ina Rilke (Knopf, $18), is emerging as a sleeper hit thanks to a happy confluence of literary merit, price and one of the most stunning covers publishing veterans can recall.
"This is exactly like (the French film) 'Amelie'," said Carl Lennerz, the publisher program director of Book Sense, part of the American Booksellers Association. "The author is unknown, it's not about glitz and hype, it's a quality book building through word of mouth."
A Book Sense best seller for 22 weeks, it is currently No. 10 on the hardcover fiction list. The list represents sales at more than 350 independent bookstores around the country.
The book's success also is connected to the striking jacket featuring a photograph by Kate Schermerhorn/Photonica. The book "came into my office and really riveted me," says Nora Rawlinson, editor in chief of "Publishers Weekly "for a decade. Rawlinson compares the book to John Lanchester's 1996 "The Debt to Pleasure", which also displayed a small, elegant graphic approach. A "Publishers" survey in 2000 revealed that cover design was the third most influential element for book buyers. A 1999 survey of book sellers described "Cold Mountain "and "Bridget Jones's Diary" as effective covers, among others.
"It's a jewel of a novel," says Knopf's Gabriele Wilson, 28, who designed the cover. Her job is to read manuscripts then find the right cover image by looking through books and photographs and on the Internet. She also haunts flea markets looking for fabric and images. A fashion designer gave her the tiny pearl buttons that adorn the book's spine.
"It's a great size in this hectic world," says Sarah Goddin, a buyer for Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, N.C. At 197 pages, the book is small: 4 1/2 inches wide and 7 1/2 inches long. But Goddin was a big fan long before she saw the cover. She read an early edition and loved the story of two Chinese doctors' sons sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. The boys are forced to carry buckets of excrement up and down a mountain. Despite the harsh conditions, the book offers "a mixture of humor and sassiness," Goddin says.
First published in France, the book has been an immediate hit. There are 85,000 copies in print in the United States.
