Pew is found on a sleeping on a church pew in an unnamed American town. They have no specific gender or race, and very rarely speak.
As Granta’s brief mentions, this book is at the cutting edge of contemporary literature. The prose is clean, modern and bold. Most of all, though – or, at least, this is what stood out to me the most – it’s a novel which is unerringly eerie. To lend a line or two from the cover copy…:
Since 2018, I’ve been designing a sort of ‘standalone series’ for Granta in the UK, called Granta Editions. Unlike most series, there isn’t a cover ‘series style’, per se. Each book has its own distinct front cover design, with the rest of the jacket layout tying the books together. They have different coloured spines and matching coloured flaps with consistent typography, and an inside cover printed in a contrasting Pantone wash.
Most exciting, though, for book design nerds like myself: hidden in the back flap is a perforated bookmark, which can be torn away from the flap to use, when reading the book. The idea for that enchanting detail came from Sarah Wasley at Granta, who commissioned me to design the series.
Currently, it seems I am irrevocably drawn to contemporary literary fiction with a touch of (oft-dark) humour. Plume is a brilliant novel. I find that designing a book that you really like can feel a little daunting. It sometimes feels as if there is an added internal pressure to get it just right.
I was pleased to see that the brief from 4th Estate was quite open. Julian Humphries, who commissioned the cover, described it as being very cool, and said that I should feel free to take some risks. Interestingly, he suggested that I “think ABCDs”, referencing the ABCD book cover design awards in the UK. As a cover designer, briefs don’t get much better than this. I felt it could be an opportunity to create something really striking and design-led, which was a pure reaction to reading the novel.
I definitely have a bit of “shinnichi” in me. I love all-things Japan and am becoming fascinated by the culture, so I was delighted to get a chance to design this little gem of a novel for Portobello at the back-end of last year.
Joyfully, the brief was particularly thorough and helpful. I noted the editor’s comparisons to Kawakami and Murakami, words like ‘sweet’, ‘charming’, ‘original’ and 'off-beat’. On the flip-side, though, this is a novel which tackles tougher subjects like loneliness and ‘the pressure to conform’. It suggested we try and achieve “Contemporary Japan. Unconventional woman. Supermarket setting. Prize-winning. Best-selling.”, and that we start by looking at brightly coloured Japanese food packaging and possible portraits of the story’s central character and narrator, Keiko.
