For writers, the so called “Oprah Effect” is real and powerful – and Cynthia Bond is living proof.
The American novelist, who is visiting the capital as a guest of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, has first-hand experience of the effect that an Oprah Book Club selection can have on a budding author.
After publisher Hogarth put out a modest print run of her powerful novel Ruby last year, Bond was pleased that her debut was receiving stellar reviews and generating steady, if unremarkable, sales mainly through good word of mouth.
What she didn’t count on was her book landing on Winfrey’s desk.
“Now, she doesn’t read all the books that are sent to her,” Bond says. “But her book club editor, Leigh Haber, was a very strong advocate for my book and recommended it to her, along with two other books. Well, she read mine and thankfully decided to pick it.”
Oprah's official announcement in December that Ruby was the fourth selection in her Book Club 2.0 also came at a fortuitous time for Bond and the publishers, who were planning the release of the paperback edition in February.
With the addition of a highly coveted Oprah Book Club silver sticker on the front cover, the novel immediately landed on the bestsellers lists.
Another reason why the Oprah pick was so important to Bond's career is that Ruby's eclectic themes defy a standard marketing approach.
Set in the virulently racist Texas town of Liberty, the novel is equal parts love story, fictional memoir and powerful ode against racial discrimination and human trafficking that’s presented in a prose that is both poetic and gothic.
“The major pull of the story are these two people who are really struggling to find a way to love one other,” Bond says. “But tied in with that are so many other things. For me it was like weaving with a loom and it was really complicated to write. I used a lot of butcher’s paper to plan all that happens.”
That intricacy is partly a product of Bond living a complicated life plagued with her own challenges. A victim of child trafficking, and the niece of a woman who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan for being involved with a white man in the 1930s, the 54-year-old Bond used Ruby to express some of the unresolved tension and ache within.
“I used to not like people very much,” she says. “I was angry at God, angry at those around me and I would write about difficult subjects but in such a way has to say, ‘Look, this is how the world we live in is, it is so horrible.’
“But as sappy as it may sound, I eventually learnt how to love people. I learnt how we are all struggling to make it in this world the best way we can and how to have compassion for people who don’t even know what’s happening around them. That’s when I wanted to make my writing a way to give people a sense of hope and redemption. I wanted it to be a gift.”
Partly behind the change of heart was Bond’s continuing role as a creative-writing tutor for American social services, helping children who were once victims of human trafficking.
“All of this destruction and dehumanisation was happening in their lives and they were doing something that was creative and life-giving,” she says.
“From them, I learnt about bravery. They wrote without pretence in a bare-boned and honest way, and to this day that informs my writing. I want to tell the truth, even if it is sometimes ugly.”
Ruby’s turbulent story will not only continue for a while yet – the novel is part of planned trilogy – but a big-screen adaptation is also in the works.
With Winfrey’s Harpo Films – co-producer of the 2014 Academy Award-winning Martin Luther King Jr biopic Selma – acquiring the rights to the book, Bond is working on the screenplay.
“I have to turn in the outline for it next week, and from then I have 10 weeks to finish it,“ she says. “It is a lot of work – and a lot more butcher’s paper.”
