Fairground Attractions

A sidecar cocktail

As I packed my suitcase, I looked over my schedule: 3 days, 42 meetings, 7 cocktail parties, 4 dinners, and one 5.30am alarm call. This year, for my own sanity, I was determined to remain aloof from the traditional frenzy of hearing about a 'hot book', trying desperately to track it down, reading it overnight, falling for it heavily and scrabbling to concoct an offer, only to discover that it has already been sold in a pre-emptive bid to an other editor, who did the deal with the agent over croissants at dawn. That way lies heart-break and madness.

Patricia Highsmith

So, this year, I would stay calm, collected, and content to converse about interesting projects and then read the manuscript in a more leisurely way back in London. As a counterbalance to the noisy chatter about unattainable new books, I threw into my case a novel I knew would keep me completely absorbed – Patricia Highsmith’s classic psychological thriller Strangers on a Train. Thus armed, I stepped on board the Eurostar.

Within an hour of arriving in Frankfurt, I was inching my way through the crowded bar in the Hessicherhof trying to spot the Italian editor for my first appointment. No sooner had we kissed hello in the appropriate fashion (2 kisses for Italians, Brits and French, 3 for Dutch, air for North American, handshake for Japanese) than she asked me if I was reading the ‘hot book’. Apparently it was being touted as ‘Devil Wears Prada meets A Brief History of Time, only shorter and with more jokes’. Hmm. I hadn’t heard of it, let alone received it.

My phone started buzzing. It was an agent back in London. He told me he wanted to email over a novel, which was probably going to be one of the ‘hot books’ at the Fair. There was already an auction going in seven European countries, a pre-empt on the table from Uruguay, film interest from Brad Pitt’s production company, and he was expecting his first British offer in the morning. A rush of blood to the head. Sounds interesting, I said, trying to sound disinterested. 'What’s the pitch? ‘Well, it sounds crazy, but the way I’m thinking of it is kinda Devil Wears Prada meets…’ Oh dear. The buzz had begun and I was powerless to resist. I could tell that Highsmith would be relegated to the bottom of my bag until I was back on the train in 3 days time. After all, telling each other crazy stories and getting ridiculously over-excited is what Frankfurt is all about.