David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks

I clear my throat. “I’ll jump straight in …”

… my last line dispatched, I return to my chair. Swing high, sweet clap-o-meter; not bad for a contingent of securely pensioned metropolitans stuffed with artisanal fudge and organic cider. They guffawed as my protagonist Trevor Upward got duct-taped to the roof of the Eurostar; squirmed when Titus Hurt found a human finger in his Cornish pastie; and thrummed at my dénouement in the Cambridge pub, which flowers into Audenesque rhyme when spoken aloud at festivals. Maeve Munro gives me a cheerful that-went-well face; I give her a why-wouldn’t-it? face back. Hershey spent his boyhood among thesps, and Dad’s habit of ridiculing my brother and me for garbled diction has borne plump fruit. Dad’s last words, as my memoir recounts, were “It’s ‘whom,’ you baboon, not ‘who’ …”

“To kick off the Q and A,” Maeve Munro addresses the tent, “I have some questions of my own. Then we’ll turn it over to our roving mikes. So, Crispin, on last Friday’s Newsnight Review , eminent critic Aphra Booth described Echo Must Die as ‘a classic male midlife crisis novel.’ Any response?”

“Oh, I’d say she’s hit the nail on the head,” I take a slow sip of water, “ if , like Aphra Booth, your notion of ‘reading’ is to skim the back jacket in the green-room loo a minute before going on air.”

My quip earns a fake smile from Maeve Munro, who is often seen wining and whining with Aphra Booth at the Mistletoe Club. “Right … And as for Richard Cheeseman’s rather lackluster review—”

“What christening is complete without a jealous fairy’s curse?”

Laughter; gasps; Twitterstorm ahoy. The Telegraph will report the line on page one of their arts section; Richard Cheeseman will get his gay-rights group to give me the Bigot of the Year Award; Hyena Hal will be thinking Publi$ity , while Nick Greek, bless, looks puzzled. American writers are so sodding nice to each other, hanging out in their Brooklyn lofts and writing each other’s references for professorial chairs. “Let’s move on,” says Maeve Munro, her fluty trill flattening, “while we’re ahead.”

“What makes you think you’re ‘ahead,’ Maeve?”

Little smile: “ Echo Must Die ’s protagonist is, like yourself, a novelist, yet in your memoir To Be Continued you dub novels about novelists ‘incestuous.’ Is Trevor Upward a U-turn, or is incest now a more attractive proposition?”

I lean back, smiling, while my interviewer’s fan base expends its gur-hurs . “While I’d never lecture a native of the Orkney Islands, Maeve , on the subject of incest, I would maintain that without shifts in viewpoint, a writer could only write the same novel ad infinitum. Or end up teaching uncreative writing at a college for the privileged in upstate New York.”

“Yet”—Maeve Munro is duly stung—“a politician who changes his or her mind is called a flip-flopper.”

“F. W. de Klerk changed his mind about Nelson Mandela being a terrorist,” I riff. “Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley changed their minds about violence in Ulster. I say, ‘Let’s hear it for the flip-floppers.’ ”

“Let me ask you this. To what degree is Trevor Upward, whose morality is decidedly elastic, modeled upon his maker?”

“Trevor Upward is a misogynist prick who gets ex act ly what he deserves on the final page. How, dear Maeve, could a royal arse like Trevor Upward”—I flash a smile of mock innocence—“ possibly be modeled on a man like Crispin Hershey?”

SMUDGED WOODS AND Herefordshire hills rear up into a misty twilight. The moist air dabs my brow like a face flannel in business class. I, the Festival Elf, Publicity Girl, and Editor Oliver traverse the wooden walkways over the sodden sod past booths selling gluten-free cupcakes, solar panels, natural sponges, porcelain mermaids, wind chimes tuned to your own chi aura, biodegradable trays of GM-free green curry, eReaders, and hand-stitched Hawaiian quilts. Hershey dons his mask of contempt to ward off unwanted approaches, but a tiny voice is singing in his soul: They know you, they recognize you, you’re back, you never went away … When we reach the signing tables at the bookshop tent, the four of us stop in astonishment. “Hell’s bells, Crispin,” says Editor Oliver, slapping my back.

Festival Elf declares, “Not even Tony Blair got a turnout like this.”

Publicity Girl says, “Wayhay and hurrahs!”

The place is pullulant with punters, cordoned by festival heavies into a snaking queue of Crispin Hershey faithful. Look on my works, Richard Cheeseman, and despair! They’ll be reprinting Echo Must Die by the weekend and a V2 of money is headed straight for the House of Hershey! Victoriously, I gain my table, sit down, knock back the glass of white wine served by the Festival Elf, unsheathe the Sharpie …

… and realize that all these people are here not for me, God sod it, but for a woman sitting at a table ten feet away. My own queue numbers fifteen. Or ten. More frumpet than crumpet. Editor Oliver has turned the color of elderly chicken slices, so I scowl at Publicity Girl for an explanation. “That’s, um, Holly Sykes.”

Oliver’s color returns. “ That’s Holly Sykes? Jesus.”

I growl, “Who in the name of buggery is Holey Spikes?”

“Holly Sykes,” says Publicity Girl, falling down the sar-chasm. “She’s written a spiritual memoir called The Radio People . On I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! Prudence Hanson — the artist — was caught reading it, and sales spiraled into hyperspace. The Hay director arranged a last-minute gig and every seat in the Future-Bank Venue was sold out in forty minutes.”

“Three cheers for the Woodstock of the Mind.” I assess the Sykes woman: skinny, earnest, lined; midforties, black hair, with silvery outriders. She’s kind to her punters: Each one gets a friendly word, which only proves how few books she’s ever signed. Envious? No. If she believes her mystic-mumbo she’s a deluded idiot. If she’s cooked it all up, she’s a snake-oil merchant. What’s to envy?

Publicity Girl asks if I’m ready to start signing. I nod. Festival Elf asks if I want a drink. “No,” I tell him. I won’t be here long. My first punter approaches the table. His crumpled brown suit belonged to his dead father and his teeth are the color of caramel. “I’m your biggest, biggest, biggest fan, Mr. Hershey, and my late mother—”

Kill me now. “A G-and-T,” I tell Festival Elf. “More G than T.”

MY LAST PUNTER, a Volumnia from Coventry, treated me to her book group’s thoughts on Red Monkey , which they “quite liked” but found the repetition of the adjectives “sodding” and “buggering” tiresome. Dear reader, Hershey missed not a beat: “So why choose the buggering book in the first sodding place?” A trio of dealers then descended, wanting a stack of first edition Desiccated Embryos signed, thereby increasing their value by five hundred pounds a pop. I asked, “Why should I?” One of the dealers gave me a sob story about driving up from Exeter “special, like, mate, and it’s not like scribbling your name costs you anything,” so I told him that if he paid me 50 percent of the markup on the nail, we’d have a deal. Mate . He vanished in a puff of poverty. Next stop is the first-night party at the BritFone Pavilion, where I am to endure a brief audience with Lord and Lady Roger and Suze Brittan. I stand up — and feel … a sniper’s tracer on my forehead. Who’s that? I look around and see Holly Sykes, watching me. She’s probably curious about real writers. I click my fingers at Publicity Girl. “ I ’m a celebrity. Get me out of here.”