I've never had to do it, so I won't underestimate the difficulties of writing the jacket copy for a novel. One must need to say enough about what's in it to interest potential readers, but at the same time not give away things about the plot that they should only discover in due time. In my experience one often does know from the blurb something one would prefer not to have known in advance. I'm not talking about actual spoilers - simply plot information that means some element of the 'untutored' reading experience is lost.
The above is by way of being a preamble to (a) my reporting an odd novel-related occurrence, and (b) recommending the novel on which it occurs (the 'on' there not being a typo).
The odd occurrence is of what I'll call an anti-spoiler: that is to say, an element on the blurb of a book which, so far from giving away a central plot development, actually throws you off the scent by suggesting something will happen in the novel that doesn't. The novel in question is Solace by Belinda McKeon, on the back cover of the paperback edition of which you will read this:
Everything after the final 'and' in the second paragraph is pure bollocks other than the existence of the family feud. It misleads in a fundamental way about what is to come.Mark Casey did not expect to fall in love. But from the minute he saw Joanne Lynch across the garden of a Dublin pub, it seemed that nothing else was possible.
But Mark is also drawn back - guiltily - to his family and the land they have farmed for generations, and when he discovers the truth behind a family feud, it threatens to destroy this passionate love affair.
I don't propose to reveal this, however, or even to hint at it. I just finished Solace this morning, and it was literally a case of being unable to put it down until I did. I was reading it before breakfast, after breakfast, after getting dressed. I had to know the end. Solace won the Irish Book of the Year Award for 2011, and it is an exceptionally accomplished debut novel. McKeon knows how to write about the facts of daily life, its textural detail, about family relationships, about the meanings that pass between people or fail to, about early parenthood; and the plot construction is consummate, so that you're always drawn along. You can see her talking about the book here, where she is careful for her part not to give away anything she shouldn't. It may be premature to compare her with John McGahern, William Trevor, Colm Tóibín, Sebastian Barry - but I thought Solace was that good.