![B&W photo of a WWII Naval battleship parked in Puget Sound](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcb7a37bb-8b25-4354-9ddf-8671695b5376_1734x1366.png)
In January of 2023, V.V. Ganeshananthan published her second novel, Brotherless Night. It had a big write-up in the New York Times, plus other accolades. Ganeshananthan, called Sugi, was my teacher at the MFA program at the University of Michigan a decade ago, and has remained a friend, so I was excited to go really hard on selling Brotherless Night.
And I did! I sold it! To our mutual friend. And one other person.
And that was it.
But believe me when I say, I tried. I left it all out on the field for Brotherless Night. I asked our buyer to not send the hardcover back after six months on the shelf because I was motivated to move that title! I wanted it! Unfortunately, for most customers who were subjected to this hard sell, the minute the words “Sri Lankan Civil War” exited my mouth, their eyes glazed over. I could tell it was a nope before they said so.
Because really, there is only one war at the bookstore and that is World War II. It’s the one war people ask for by name. It’s rare that someone comes in and asks for a Korean War novel, a Vietnam War novel (although sometimes someone asks for MASH, and there’s the new Kristin Hannah*), the Boer War, or even WWI. We have seen an uptick in interest in the works of Palestinian writers of late, but that hits different than the person hungry for sweeping tales of intrigue and adventure in Europe, shooting at Nazis. It would make sense to have a dedicated WWII shelf in the store.
The WWII novel is an entire genre unto itself and booksellers can look no further than Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See as the go-to WWII sweeping, creeping, and never sleeping novel that book club denizens crave. Doerr’s 2015 Pulitzer winner is one of the most fireproof books on the fiction market today. It sells, it continues to sell, and it will probably always be on a bookstore shelf. It’s like the floor. (Floor metaphors appeal to me for some reason—ask my fiancé.) It’s always there. And you want it to be there because someone’s going to ask for it.
In some ways, this trend is disappointing to me as a writer. World War II enjoys a sort of moral righteousness in our collective imagination. There were clear-cut good guys and bad guys and the US was a good guy (you’ll note that the majority of readers really want a book about Europe, not the Pacific) and we all know the ending. That readers crave this level of surety in what they choose is disheartening but expected. These books also tend to have victorious endings, ones in which goodness prevails, and yeah, we don’t have a lot of that in life anymore.
Retellings of familiar stories tend to do well. Oprah pick Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano coasted a lot on “a retelling of Little Women,” but it looks like any book that features four sisters as protagonists is going to get hit with the MegJoBethAmy stick.
It is not my job as a bookseller to get readers to try a new war, though it is my job to encourage them to expand their horizons, but readers are not always amenable. That is what it is. I can’t boss people into being interested in books they don’t want to read. Or I guess I could, but I want people to be happy, not feel pressured into getting something they don’t want. I want bookstores to be bullying-free zones.
I think this is ultimately a post about humans crave familiarity and that extends to their book buying habits. In a WWII novel, you can feel confident that you know how it’s going to end and it’s going to feel a certain way. WWII is shorthand for an aesthetic, a vibe, a moment, a triumph, and something that makes you think about your grandparents. The point of reading it is to see the movements that get you to that well-worn moment of victory. You kind of already know the ending, which is the entire point of its appeal.
It is my hope that this post sells at least one copy of Brotherless Night to someone who is brave enough to read about a war that wasn’t World War II, or who simply wants a compelling read. Sugi told me her book is doing well in former British Commonwealth countries, and I love that for her.
POST SCRIPT FUN FACT!: my father, George Daviau (1910-1992) (he was really old when I was born, if you didn’t already know that!) was an officer in the Navy during World War II. He didn’t have to, but he didn’t “want to miss the big show.” The USS Brackett (pictured above) was a destroyer escort and anti-submarine ship in the Pacific. My father used to say the war was the most fun he ever had. He would probably ask for WWII novels if he were still here.
*This came out weird, but yes, I know MASH takes place during the Korean War. I should pay an editor before I hit send.