Introducing your book club’s next obsession
It’s only happened twice and both times the books were monster hits. Now, forthcoming book The Nest is poised to join All the Light We Cannot See and The Girl on the Train as a blockbuster seller. Indigo’s Heather Reisman tells us why
Just as Martha or Gwyneth trigger a pang of underachievement in domestic doyennes, Heather Reisman is an intimidating figure for booklovers.
She’s the founder and CEO of Indigo, Canada’s leading “cultural department store” and she still has time to polish off Jonathan Franzen’s latest doorstop. What’s your excuse?
Since 1998, she’s been the face of 262 “Heather’s Picks,” the Oprah-esque seal (or sticker) of approval that comes with a money-back guarantee and has emerged as a reliable sales driver. “Almost all Heather’s books end up selling quite well,” she says, sitting in a chair in her in-office sitting area, bowls of fresh oranges and almonds on the coffee table.
In the lap of her black-pleated skirt is the next Heather’s Pick. The Nest, the debut novel by American writer Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, is a family saga about siblings who clash over an inheritance. HarperCollins’ Ecco imprint bought it in a seven-figure deal in December 2014.
In a rare intersection of Indigo endorsements, The Nest, out March 22, has been named both a Heather’s Pick and a Staff Pick which, since 2012, has been chosen by a revolving panel of Indigo employees from stores and head office. The only previous novels to receive both blessings were 2014’s All The Light We Cannot See, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, and last year’s The Girl On The Train.
“( The Nest) came to me from our internal print team in a very early ARC (advance reader copy),” she says. “It was with 10 other books that they brought to me. I loved the (turquoise) colour. It had a beautiful cover. Literally halfway through the first paragraph I was already into it.”
Most Heather’s Picks grab her from the first page. If she isn’t hooked after 20 pages, she’s done. “Literally 20 pages,” she says.
Reisman is constantly playing defence against the perception that she is as much reading Heather’s Picks as J. Lo is whipping up Miami Glo in her bathtub. “I get asked all the time, do you really pick your Heather’s Picks?” she says. “And it makes me smile because I am so careful about what becomes a Heather’s Pick and it only has to be something that I love like crazy.”
She tries to read a book a week. “Sometimes it doesn’t happen,” she says. “I’m like everybody else. If two weeks go by and I haven’t read, I get out of the habit. I usually start reading a book on the weekend. If it’s really good I’ll finish it.”
There’s no schedule to Heather’s Picks. “Sometimes I read 10 things or 12 things or 15 things and . . . they’re good!” she says. “I’m glad I read them. But not a Pick. And then I’ll read something and from the second I get started I love it. And then I do what I’ve done for my whole life, and I tell all the people that I care about that I love it.”
One of her cardinal reading rules — no devices. “I take my iPad and my iPhone and I put them in another room,” she says. She reads everywhere, including aloud to her husband of more than 30 years, Gerry Schwartz, as he does to her, though she admits she’s the faster reader.
“The only place I don’t read, interestingly enough, I don’t read in bed, because I would fall asleep,” she says. “The only time I will read in bed is if I have a Sunday morning with nothing to do. The sun is shining in through the windows and I know I have the whole Sunday ahead of me and nowhere to go.” The image, as with everything Heather, is a true booklover’s fantasy.