Some years ago, I had a novel rejected by a publisher who used the words 'we find that novels with such a long time frame tend to discourage readers…' The time frame in question was not generations or even decades, but about ten years. Bridget Jones was still dominating the bestseller charts, and all contemporary fiction for women seemed to take place in the course of a maximum period of about a year. Girl faces problem, girl solves problem, girl loses man, girl finds new, better man. All in the space of a few shopping- and chardonnay- fuelled months.
Maybe it was part of a culture of immediate gratification. Readers wanted an upbeat ending and they wanted it fast. If they were going to escape into a world populated by characters who were 'real people', facing the same trials and tribulations as they did themselves, they didn't want to think it would take a lifetime, or even several lifetimes to go from rags to riches.
Interestingly, when this year's longlist for the Romantic Novelists Association Award was announced, there were no less than eight sagas among the twenty-two nominees, and the book trade seems to be heralding the return of the saga as a bestselling genre.
Is this just a trend amongst readers? Or is it a sign that we’re all beginning to come to the realisation that there’s no such thing as the quick fix?
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