A believe the zip ties, the strips of paper that decorate and advertise most of the recently released books in bookstores, there are dozens of editorial cases every year. Unfortunately for the publishing houses, however, this is not really the case: all the books by famous and popular authors end up on time in the charts of the best-selling books, while it is much rarer that a novel by a little-known writer sells so much, in the sense of so much more. forecasts.
This year, however, there is a real case: that of Change the water to the flowers by Valérie Perrin, published by E / O. It is a novel that, after having been released without getting too noticed in the summer of 2019, has become one of the best-selling books since the end of the lockdown, reaching first in the charts at the beginning of September and selling around 180 thousand copies. All this, mainly, thanks to the advice of booksellers and word of mouth among readers.
What is it about Change the water to the flowers
It is 473 pages long and is largely set in a provincial cemetery in France between 2016 and 2017, although there are numerous flashbacks. The protagonist, Violette Toussaint, is more or less 50 years old and she is the guardian of the cemetery: the person opens and closes the gates every day and lives, alone, in a small house with a door that gives onto the street and one to which it is accessed from the area of the tombs. In the first pages, a man knocks on one of the doors and has to lay his mother’s ashes on the grave of a stranger, without knowing why.
The opening words of “Changing the water to flowers”
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The novel’s setting is not as bleak as it might seem and the only ghosts mentioned are either legendary or fake. There are very dramatic aspects to the story, but the spirit of the novel is close to that of French comedies: someone who has read it compares it to the film The fabulous world of Amélie oa Chocolat (even if it’s only set in France) for the atmosphere it builds; And / Or already in the back cover instead he approaches it toElegance of the hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, another French novel and another great success of the publishing house.
The plot of Change the water to the flowers is very rich and complex, and probably this feature is one of the reasons why the book has been so successful: there are various twists, and since the plot goes back and forth in time, following different characters, the reading is very rhythmic. Without spoilers, there are: various love stories that are not the most important part of the novel; many secondary stories, some very small, reminiscent of the narrative poems ofSpoon River Anthology; betrayals; an orphan; a character who looks like the typical helper of fairy tales; and a tragic story. In the second half the novel becomes almost a detective story: some characters start a personal investigation to find out if a certain fact (we said without spoilers) was caused intentionally.
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The publishing history of the novel
Valérie Perrin is 53 years old and before becoming a writer she was a photographer, specifically a stage photographer in film productions. Change the water to the flowers is his second novel: the first, The notebook of lost love, came out in 2015, both in France and in Italy, where it was published by the Nord publishing house. In Italian bookstores, however, it was not particularly successful: publishing houses often choose to publish a writer’s book because the previous one liked the readers, but in the case of Change the water to the flowers it was not so.
Instead, there is a “small recommendation” from the French publisher, Albin Michel, and a very enthusiastic first reading, he told the Post Sandra Ozzola, editor of E / O: «I read it quickly and it struck me a lot». The novel was released in France in February 2018, and E / O published it in Italian in July 2019 in the translation by Alberto Bracci Testasecca. The image on the cover is the same as the French edition, with some modifications, explained Ozzola: “We tried to take away the look that was perhaps a little too pink, romantic, we tried to muffle it, so that it didn’t look like a book for ladies ».
On the left the French cover of “Cambiare acqua ai fiori”, on the right the Italian one
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The first few weeks in bookstores went well in terms of sales for a book released with no particular expectations. “We put it on the market, poor thing, with no famous name to support it, no tour to push it,” said Ozzola. Perrin’s low notoriety is probably among the reasons for reviews initially there weren’t many: on the most important publications only small articles, except for ainterview on All books of the Print.
Sales began to grow as early as 2019, but slowly. In October the book popped up in a secondary ranking, one of the twenty best-selling books of foreign fiction, but in the period before Christmas, the time of year when more books are sold, it did not receive particular attention. At the beginning of the year it was around 15th position. Then during the lockdown, while the rankings were a little high from the closing of the bookstores, the fact that Amazon stopped shipping many books and the postponement of many new releases, Change the water to the flowers gained a few positions. In May, with the reopening of the bookstores, it continued to rise in the ranking of foreigners, entering the top ten positions. During the summer the climb continued up to the levels of the general classification, the one where there are mainly Italian novels and books (such as those written by famous people who are not writers). The first week of September Change the water to the flowers it finally reached the top of the chart, with around nine thousand copies sold in seven days. Now it has dropped to third place, but continues to sell a lot: more than 180,000 copies since release.
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As sales increased, many journalists noticed the book and so more and more newspapers wrote about it and perhaps brought a few more people to buy it, but it was above all word of mouth among readers that determined the commercial success of Change the water to the flowers. “It was one of those little miracles that happen in publishing,” commented Ozzola. Word of mouth about books is an unpredictable and somewhat mysterious phenomenon, on which publishers try to bet, never knowing if it will really trigger.
In the case of this novel, however, a good hypothesis can be made about how it all began: the lockdown has to do with it. Not because, as some have speculated, Change the water to the flowers talks about the elaboration of mourning and we are in a complicated period for many people, more or less affected by the pandemic, but for the pause of new releases and, paradoxically, for the closure of bookstores, which has made the advice of booksellers more important. He explained it to Post Nicolò Lovat, from the Lovat bookshop in Villorba, in the province of Treviso, one of those where more copies of Change the water to the flowers: «It benefited from the stop of the novelties, which gave more space to the books that were already there. We all booksellers read it and recommended it when we started doing home sales. We almost struggled to keep up with the orders, because it exploded ».
The same thing happened in the Hoepli bookshop in Milan, another that has sold many copies of Change the water to the flowers. Manuela Stefanelli, director of the bookshop, said that word of mouth was first of all internal and that the novel has convinced even booksellers with very different tastes. Since the beginning of the year by Hoepli Change the water to the flowers he had already sold a lot, thanks to the advice of the booksellers, who had become more important during the lockdown because the readers could not wander around the shelves of the library. “Our regular public gets a lot of advice,” explained Stefanelli. Even today the book is very visible in the library and also has a reserved part in the window.
“Changing the water to the flowers” in the window of the Hoepli bookshop in Milan (Il Post)
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Both in the Lovat bookshop and in the Hoepli bookshop the book was also liked by readers apparently outside the “target” assumed for the book, that is female readers. According to Nicolò Lovat, the review by Antonio D’Orrico, one of the best known and most respected Italian literary critics, released on May 2nd on Reading of the Corriere della Sera. He quotes a review from an online reader and ends like this: «The unknown reader is right: it is the most beautiful novel in the world. And it deserves a double vote. 10 + 10 “. Then some didn’t like it, but it always happens to the most successful books too.
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Collateral effect
If word of mouth remains a somewhat mysterious phenomenon, the fact that thanks to the success of Change the water to the flowers Perrin’s previous novel also made it to the best-selling charts. Nord has appropriately re-proposed it with a new cover, where you can see a woman from behind as in that of Change the water to the flowers. Two weeks ago The notebook of lost love (which tells of a twentieth-century love story told by an elderly woman to an employee of the nursing home where she lives) was third on the foreign fiction chart, fourth last week.
From left to right the first Italian cover of “The notebook of lost love” and the second, more recent
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Meanwhile, Valérie Perrin is writing a new novel, which will probably end in 2021, and will soon come to meet her Italian publishers and meet her readers: she will participate in Together, a literary festival to be held in Rome from 1st to 4th October. Among the booksellers, however, there is curiosity about how it will go Change the water to the flowers in the coming months: it is already an editorial case, but it will truly be a bestseller if it is among the most bought books at Christmas.
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