How a man with a passion for climbing trees has set literary pulses racing
Debut writer secures one of the biggest advances of the year after publishers hail book as next big thing
A GUIDE to climbing trees for adults might not seem like the next big seller, but it has secured one of the year’s biggest advances for a debut writer after a bidding war by publishers.
The Treeclimber’s Guide to London, by Jack Cooke, is billed as a “charming account” of the 80 trees he has scaled in the past year.
HarperCollins beat four competing publishers to secure the worldwide rights with an advance of close to £75,000. It is an unusually high figure for an unknown author: JK Rowling, for example, received an advance of just £1,500 for the first Harry Potter book.
Cooke, 29, who grew up in Suffolk, had the idea for the book last year while working in an office overlooking Regent’s Park in London.
“I just started climbing trees again for the first time since I was a kid. The views over London were so extraordinary and I thought, ‘this is really a lost wilderness that I want to explore’,” he said.
“There is this real divide between adults and children in terms of attitude. Adults don’t climb trees any more, and it’s not about fear – it’s shame, a feeling of ‘I can’t climb a tree because that would be undignified’.” Cooke has climbed trees all over the capital – mostly in parks but also by canals, roadsides and even roundabouts – and said he often went unnoticed.
“People never look up in London. You can spend hours in trees and no one notices you.
“The embarrassing bit is coming down out of a tree and crash-landing in a picnic that someone has set out while you’ve been up there.”
The legality of climbing trees in public parks is a grey area, he added. “The only time I’ve been stopped was when a woman rang up and told the police I was trying to hang myself. The policeman who turned up found it incredibly funny, but even he was unclear about whether or not I should be climbing trees.”
The book is a cross between a how-to guide and “a daydreamer’s handbook”, according to HarperCollins, who said it tapped into the current trend for books on mindfulness and urban escape.
It will be published in 2016 with illustrations drawn by Cooke’s wife, Jennifer.
Jack Fogg, the publishing director at HarperCollins, described the book as “truly one of a kind”.
He added: “He writes beautifully on nature and its convergence with city life, and brings an elegant, lyrical and unassuming tone to his writing which fits perfectly with the subject.”
Cooke’s literary agent, Claudia Young, said: “An advance like this is definitely unusual. But it is a wonderful book that really grabs people’s attention. As soon as I sent it out, the response was fantastic. There were five publishers in the running and they all ‘got’ the book straight away.
“It is lyrical and escapist reading for the armchair tree climber, who can climb vicariously through Jack. But it is also a practical guide.
“When he writes about climbing in Hyde Park, there isn’t necessarily a specific tree you should go out and find. It’s not about giving you the exact GPS coordinates for a tree, it’s about encouraging the reader to see the potential in climbing trees.”