So after a few weeks of noticing it in bookstores and then dismissing it, I finally picked up BEAUTIFUL RUINS by Jess Walters, read the jacket copy, realized it sounded excellent, purchased it, started reading it, and discovered that lo and behold, it IS excellent, and everyone else should read it too. It is funny and different and smart and meaningful and thoughtful and everything good.

You know what turned me off it all those other times?

The typography. You know, the font for the title and author name.

I hate that whimsical cursive script.

I hate to admit it, but it’s true. I judged that book by, not even its cover, but its font.

I say that as someone who has had her fair share of lame cover typography. Not for BROOKLYN GIRLS, those cover fonts are strong and cool and awesome, they really are. (See? And see?)

But the original cover title fonts to my first two books, THE DATING DETOX and to a lesser extent A GIRL LIKE YOU, were just like that, with variations on that same I’m-Not-Very-Smart-Pass-The-Tampons cursive script, you know? The kind of font usually reserved for books by and about women. (Snarl.)

I should add that the new US covers to my first two books are far better. See? Not a curly script in sight.

Anyway, BEAUTIFUL RUINS  is an excellent book. More than excellent, it’s practically perfect. If you need me, I’ll be buying everything else Jess Walters ever wrote.

PS By the way, when I give book recommendations, they usually won’t be in my genre. Which used to be chicklit, and is now New Adult, whatever. I read everything. Well, everything except Rape’n’Stab James Patterson type books, or fluffy He Saved Me! romances, or weepy And-Then-My-Mother-Locked-Me-In-A-Suitcase misery books. I heard a story that at a Harper Collins summer party, one of their would-be-debonair crime authors had a one-night-stand with some broken-spirited misery lit author. It seems like such a perfect pairing that I almost want to write a book about it. You know, almost. What was I saying? Yes. New Adult. Apparently some people think New Adult is just Young Adult with added fucking, which means they’ll be extremely disappointed when they read my stuff, as it’s fairly fuck-free. I think of Young Adult as books about finding out who you are, and New Adult as finding out what you want to do with your life and how you’re going to do it… since that was kind of what my first two books were really about anyway, I’m glad there’s now a genre that agrees with me. (What’s a book without a genre? Oh yes. A book.) I read Semi-Charmed Life by Nora Zelevansky and enjoyed it very very much – it’s smart and witty and original, kind of like New Adult as interpreted by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – and I read Losing It by Cora McCormack and thought the delivery was genuinely funny and the sexy stuff was awesome but the plot was very, very strangely 1950s-ish, like New Adult as interpreted by Sandra Dee. Apart from those, there just isn’t a lot of New Adult about… Yet. Give it ten years. We’ll be drowning in graduates. New Adult is the new vampire. Oh, which reminds me. I read this recently, it’s YA/vampire from one (well, two) of my agent’s other authors, and enjoyed it. I love the strapline. “Friends don’t let friends date vampires”. Hilarious. Okay. This PS needs to END already. Seriously. You hang up. No you hang up. No, honestly, I really am going now… Psych! I’m still here. Okay, no this is it now. Goodbye. Go read Beautiful Ruins already.

So this is pretty exciting.

A piece in the New York Times on Saturday about BROOKLYN GIRLS.

Post-Collegiate Exploits In Brooklyn

By BLAKE WILSON

Those who find themselves attracted to the Brooklyn bohemia of Lena Dunham’s “Girls” but who can’t understand why its gritty depictions of post-collegiate reality have to be quite so gritty might want to distract themselves instead with “Brooklyn Girls” (St. Martin’s Griffin, $14.99), a sassy summer confection by the young novelist and screenwriter Gemma Burgess.

The story stars Pia, an art history major fresh out of Brown with no money, no job and definitely no clue. After a semi-topless photo on Facebook costs her an entry-level gig in public relations, she faces a deadline from her parents: get it together in two months, or move out of the Carroll Gardens brownstone she shares with a quartet of friends, and back home to Switzerland.

Goddamn thrilling, huh? I don’t get excited about most book-related stuff – I don’t have book launch parties, I don’t do readings, I don’t tingle when I see them in bookstores, I’d honestly rather just write – but wow, I got excited about this. This is just lovely. Thank you Blake Wilson.

One other thing.

People are going to keep comparing my book series and HBO’s Girls. They’re both about young women! They’re obviously identical (except being completely different in tone, audience, plot, characters, and as Blake says, grittiness, etc…).

Publishing is very, very slow. I conceptualized, got the book deal, and wrote BROOKLYN GIRLS in 2010 and early 2011. The writing process of BROOKLYN GIRLS is updated all through my blog, and the first announcement about the BROOKLYN GIRLS book deal with St Martin’s Press was in Publisher’s Marketplace on January 14, 2011. (The working title was ‘UNION STREET’.) Lena Dunham’s brilliant, hilarious and original Girls premiered April 2012. I finished writing the second book in the series, LOVE AND CHAOS in mid-2012, and it’s out early 2014. Like I said, publishing is slow.

Just because two writers notice the same thing (the total lack of books/tv shows about young women starting adult life) – and set it in the same location (because it’s an accessibly aspirational and very interesting place where, duh, a lot of graduates live when they get to NYC) – doesn’t mean there’s some huge conspiracy afoot.  Seriously.

So I did a little interview with Aritzia magazine – check it out here.

Love the new Robin Thicke song Blurred Lines?

Offended by the topless bimbo video and potential rape-ishness of the lyrics?

I have the solution. Listen to this instead. It’s similar but, you know, way better.

And it’s my favorite song of all time.

Got To Get It On by Marvin Gaye.

To celebrate the launch of BROOKLYN GIRLS, some of the loveliest authors I know very kindly agreed to write about what life was like for them at 22…

Continue reading →

As mentioned, Brooklyn Girls is out.

I think that what I’m supposed to do, as the author, is talk endlessly about the book series, the characters, the plots, blahblahyadablah. But I’ve done that, ad infinitum, in this blog, and everywhere else, and my God, you must be sick of it. If you want to read it, I figure you’ll read it, if you don’t, me telling you about how I worked out characters isn’t going to convince you. Anyway, it’s a bit like seeing the guy with the hand up Kermit’s ass. Sometimes, you just want to see the damn frog.

Instead, let’s talk about what inspired the book series: life in one’s early 20s. Because, as I’ve said before, it’s a really tough period. You’ve just graduated, you’ve been educated out the wazoo, and you suddenly realize that you’re qualified to do fuck-all except Starbucks runs. You can’t get a job that will pay you enough to actually, you know, have a life. Men suck. Or rather, boys, since 23-year-old boys really are still boys. You spend most of your time broke, worried, confused, lost, heartbroken, hungry or hungover.

And yet…

You get to have the most carefree, uninhibited, joyful fun with your best friends. At least, I did. And you get to figure out what you want to do with your life – which is yes, intimidating as hell, but it’s also exciting, because you’ve got a blank slate. The world is your bitch.

That’s why… (drumroll): Life Begins At 22.

So  I’ve been asking everyone what their lives were like at 22, and I’m going to post the answers on this blog over the next few weeks. If you’d like to get involved, YAY! Email me your answers to gemma@gemmaburgess.com and I’ll post them on the blog, or if you prefer, just put them in the comments. Whatever floats your boat.

Life Begins At 22 questions…

1. What were you doing at 22? Living situation, work/study situation?

2. Were you dating / in a relationship? What was it like?

3. What was the hardest thing that happened to you that year? What was the best?

4. What would you say to yourself at 22, knowing what you know now?

5. What do you do now, by the way?

This morning I woke up with this playing in my head.

Why? Because BROOKLYN GIRLS is finally available to buy here, here and here!

Naturally, your first choice for summer read will be BROOKLYN GIRLS by yours truly, out next week!

Right. Pathetic attempt at self-promotion out of the way, here’s my next recommendation:

CRAZY RICH ASIANS by Kevin Kwan. Buy it here in the US, it’s not officially out in the UK yet but you can buy the US edition sneakily via The Book Depository.

I fricking loved this book. Like if Jilly Cooper and Plum Sykes had a Singaporean love child. It is hilarious and totally fresh escapism, set among the 0.00001% richest people in Asia.

PS I have long said I don’t trust people who don’t read fiction and it turns out there’s a good reason why. Reading fiction makes people smarter and nicer. “individuals who often read fiction appear to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and view the world from their perspective.” That means you.