Inside Books: What’s in a name?

This is the second instalment of Emily Rhodes’ Inside Books series.

A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but anyone with even a poor sense of smell and negligible knowledge of botany will have noticed that some roses smell sweeter than others. The same goes for the names of books. As some titles evidently smell particularly sweet, there can be some rather unexpected bookish twins.

Last week, several children — and a few doting parents — rushed into the bookshop to ask if we had Inheritance. I had to quell my initial instinct to show them Robert Sackville-West’s Inheritance, his very good book about Knole. Strange I thought, when confronted with a ten-year-old boy apparently keen to learn about a stately home, perhaps he’s buying a present for a parent.

It didn’t take long for me to realise that they were asking for a different book altogether. Published last Thursday, this Inheritance is by Christopher Paolini, the fourth and final volume of a cycle of children’s fantasy novels. The book has achieved record breaking sales.

Inheritance is clearly a winner, a name with a particularly sweet scent. A quick combing of memory and a little hunting online yields a wealth of books sharing that title. There’s an acclaimed literary novel by Nicholas Shakespeare, chick lit by Tara Palmer-Tompkinson, fantasy stories by Robin Hobb, a family saga by Nina Bell, and one of a series of books about a horse-trainer by Jenny Pitman. And that’s without including the numerous books that use ‘inheritance’ as one of many words in the title (The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai, for instance).

Needless to say, these books are aimed at very different markets. What is it about the word ‘inheritance’ that makes such a range of readers want to buy the book? A ten-year-old boy might think of notions of honour, of undertaking a quest and fulfilling one’s destiny. He probably doesn’t think of ‘inheritance’ in the same way as Tara Palmer-Tompkinson, or, for that matter, as Robert Sackville-West. But in all its various guises, inheritance is an idea to which everyone can relate. Granted, not many inherit a stately home. But everyone inherits something — even if it’s no more than a father’s smile or a grandmother’s hypochondria. Everyone understands the passing down of things, of dealing with a legacy that one has been born into. No wonder publishers read ‘inheritance’ and hear ‘ker-chiiiing’.

Another popular name is Nemesis – Philip Roth’s acclaimed recent literary offering; Jo Nesbo’s Scandinavian thriller; one of Lindsey Davis’ Falco Mysteries; an Agatha Christie Miss Marple; Max Hastings’ military history … the list goes on.

One feels that such instances of title sharing are unintentional. I very much doubt that Philip Roth or his publisher thought to give his latest book the same name as one of Jo Nesbo’s thrillers. It’s unlikely that they would have hoped to steal unwitting readers from the Scandinavian crime camp. Likewise for Max Hastings and Agatha Christie. It’s not necessarily an homage, unlike the inevitable surge in popularity of a particular baby name following a celebrity’s decision. (How I wish all the new Harpers were named after Lee rather than Beckham!)

But there is sometimes a deliberate titular echo. This is evident, most recently, in Julian Barnes’ Booker-prize winning The Sense of an Ending. Searching by title on Amazon, one is presented first with Barnes’ novella and then a 1965 work of literary theory by Frank Kermode. Critics were swift to point out this twinning of names. Justin Cartwright in the Observer explained that Frank Kermode ‘explored the way in which writers use “peripeteia” — the unexpected twist in the plot — to force readers to adjust their expectations’. Sounds like a nasty tummy ache to me, but the point is that what makes Barnes’ novella so brilliant is the unexpected twist in the plot. (Although I suppose it’s no longer quite so unexpected.) The twinning of titles here is a little self-conscious nod to that theory. One could be forgiven for deciding that the nod is rather over-intellectualised. Lucky it’s such a good title, in any case.

The fact of the matter is that choosing a title for a book is difficult. It has to appeal to readers and capture the essence of the book. Getting it right matters. Especially when there’s rather a lot of money at stake.

When Random House changed the title of Tony Blair’s memoir from The Journey to A Journey, they dismissed it as a ‘minor editorial decision’. Random House were rumoured to have paid Blair an advance of £4.6 million. When that kind of sum is involved, as well as a colossal amount of hype and publicity, there aren’t really any minor decisions. Changing the article from the definite to the indefinite might seem like no more than grammatical pedantry, but when in the limelight of the title, it becomes much more important.

Perhaps the publishers realised that calling one’s memoirs definitively The Journey could be seen as somewhat presumptuous, or arrogant. Surely everyone makes journeys over the course of their life, and Blair’s is just one of many. A Journey seems softer, kinder, casting Blair as a man of the people. Or so they thought.

This preoccupation with getting the title right isn’t a recent thing. Famously, The Lord of the Flies was originally called Strangers from Within. Pride and Prejudice was nearly published as First Impressions; Hard Times, According to Cocker; and – I find this one particularly odd – Catch 22 was nearly Catch 18.

I wonder if Heller’s publisher Robert Gottlieb had even an inkling that his decision to change the title would have such a lasting effect on the English language. He changed it — to Heller’s great distress — because another novel about the Second World War had just been published under the title Mila 18 and he wanted to avoid confusion. There was much numerical wrangling before settling on the now-immortal Catch 22. Neither ‘Catch 11’ nor ‘Catch 14’ made the cut.

What is it that makes some titles better than others? It’s the million (or, in some cases, multi-million) dollar question. Sometimes publishers go for something accessible, understandable, something that evokes a feeling of empathy in a potential reader. Inheritance works along these lines, as does A Journey, and, indeed, Hard Times.
 
The other type of title that seems to enjoy particular success is one that intrigues. A Visit from the Goon Squad, We Need to Talk about Kevin, Death Comes to Pemberley. These titles instantly beg a question. What goon squad? Who’s Kevin? Pemberley, as in Jane Austen? It’s hard to resist picking up the book and at least reading the back cover to see if it offers any answers.

So it’s no real surprise then, that one of the most recent runaway successes has a title that manages to cover both camps. The Hare with Amber Eyes. What hare? Why are its eyes amber? There’s the intrigue. And it’s followed by a subtitle containing both the accessible indefinite article and a winningly popular word: A Hidden Inheritance. Well done Edmund de Waal and his publisher Chatto. I’m sure that many authors and publishers have taken note.