Novel by Fergie? You couldn’t make it up...
STOP ALL the clocks: the Duchess of York’s first adult novel has hit the shelves! Her Heart for a Compass, by Sarah Ferguson, is “a mesmerising debut novel of love and daring to follow your heart,” – cor.
But this is just the latest example of Fergie’s talents: “Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, is a bestselling memoirist and children’s author, film producer and has been a spokesperson for Weight Watchers andWedgewood China… she works on historical documentaries and films that draw on her deep interest in Victorian history,” her publishers tell us. Is there nothing Renaissance Fergie cannot do? Fergie has actually written (or had her name on) more than 70 books already, so what more can she bring to the party with this?
A pretty accurate version of how she sees herself, that’s what, for as in just about all first novels, the author is at the centre of the action. And so we learn her heroine has red hair, freckles, is best friends with a beautiful princess, likes chocolate and has weight issues, and not only writes stories for children but reads them aloud.
No mention of toe sucking, mind you, or allowing New York-based paedophiles to pay off your debts or being duped by fake sheikhs into accepting five hundred grand to allow access to your ex-husband.
No matter. Truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction, as is the case here. But reading someone’s novel can provide a very strange insight into their own character.
I once knew someone who wrote a first novel: the second sentence read: “But first let me tell you about myself.”
Someone else penned a tome that was so execrable it never got near publication: practically every other paragraph contained the following: “I looked in the mirror. I looked great.” (I wouldn’t dream of commenting.)
It’s odd when people you know start writing novels: yet another acquaintance, who clearly considers himself too cool for school, wrote an irritatingly good debut and so I dutifully and somewhat sourly picked up a subsequent offering, which clearly tried to be deeply philosophical.
It was absolute rubbish, and I finished it feeling a much happier soul.
JEFFREY Archer is said to put himself at the centre of all of his novels. Though I’ve never read any of them, I believe characters bearing a resemblance to the fragrant Mary pretty frequently crop up as the love interest, too.
And at least none of the above authors had to do what Lady Colin Campbell did when she wrote a novel called Empress Bianca: namely pulp it because it bore rather a strong resemblance to the life of the socialite Lily Safra (a revised version was published), except that it made her out to be a murderer, which the original most certainly isn’t.
Deep waters.
Far better to stick to plump, flame-haired duchesses, instead.