One of the hottest titles at this week's Frankfurt Book Fair - the last of the 20th century - is a biography of T.S. Eliot's disturbed first wife, Vivien. The Constable stand was bedecked with haunting pictures of the beautiful but doomed Vivien and foreign rights were being vigorously pursued for the book which is provisionally titled Painted Shadow and is due to be published in September 2000.
Written by Carole Seymour-Jones, it may face the wrath of T.S. Eliot's widow, Valerie. As Constable's editorial director, Carol O'Brien, put it to Sadbh: "We have had no help from the Eliot estate. Valerie Eliot is a fierce protector of the flame." One of the saddest love stories in the literary canon and already the subject of the film, Tom and Viv, the new book takes a revisionist line. According to Seymour-Jones, she wasn't just the hysterical wife tormenting the "saintly Tom". She was a writer herself and only really started going off the rails when her marriage broke up.
After the poet wouldn't answer her letters, she began waylaying him at Faber's offices in Bloomsbury, forcing him to leave by the back stairs. She once turned up, poignantly, with a placard around her neck reading: "I am the wife he abandoned".
Vivien's diaries in the Bodleian library, Ezra Pound's papers and the papers of Bertrand Russell, with whom she had a long affair, all put bones on a story which should cause fireworks when we see it next autumn.
AS more and more deals are done on-line, the book fair in Frankfurt becomes an increasingly social event. Irish Ambassador Noel Fahey's drinks party on Thursday was a must, and the same night saw the Hodder and Stoughton's bash for Every Dead Thing author, John Connolly. We blinked when we saw rows and rows of Connolly's new novel, Dark Hollow, on the Hodder stand, but they were just proofs.
Although official publication is on January 6th, copies will be in the shops before Christmas. His publishers cheerfully talk of it as "his next bestseller" and of John as "the greatest thriller writing discovery of the past decade". Having met him in a Dublin Spar doing some late-night grocery shopping just before he flew to Frankfurt, Sadbh can report that none of this has gone to his head. He's still as nice as ever.
SADBH was by no means the only Irish bookworm catching the red-eye to Germany at some un-Godly hour last Tuesday morning. All the main Irish publishers are in Frankfurt, along with colleagues from more than 111 countries. Interestingly, because of industry mergers and economic problems in eastern Europe, the number of exhibitors is down slightly at this, the 51st fair. But you wouldn't think it, seeing the throngs arriving every morning desperate to scout out talent and acquire rights.
Michael O'Brien of the O'Brien Press was chatting animatedly about John Cooney's Life of John Charles McQuaid which he is publishing in November, and Edwin Higel of New Island Books was stopping people in their tracks by producing what he called Roddy Doyle's latest novel - not A Star Called Henry but Not Just For Christmas, a short volume Doyle wrote for New Island's Open Door series. The brainchild of Patricia Scanlan, the book is designed to lure people into reading via stories heavy on plot and written in easy-to-read prose. Dermot Bolger and others are in the first batch of the series; there will be more next year.
Over on the Granta stand where he was doing business wearing his publisher's hat, Dubliner Neil Belton was being congratulated on winning the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Non-Fiction last week. He is looking forward to reading from The Good Listener in Dublin next month and being presented with his prize by the President, Mrs McAleese.
THERE was much talk at the Fair of the nine-book deal Transworld has made with fantasy author Steve Erikson. His first novel, Gardens of the Moon, has made over £675,000 and he is being hailed as the new Terry Pratchett. Not surprisingly, Erikson, who until a week or so ago was working with Toyota in Dorking, has now packed in the day job.
BACK home, there's still a chance to catch some of the fun of the Fair when it travels to Ireland for the first time next week. Kicking off on October 21st, there'll be a string of events, highlighting German literature in Dublin and Belfast. Delighted to have many of the events hosted by the Irish Writer's Centre, director Peter Sirr describes how the programme was put together: "We didn't just want to appeal to German readers so we've put readings by young contemporary German writers together with Irish counterparts such as Hugo Hamilton and Joseph O'Connor."
There are readings, an exhibition of more than 1,000 books and children's programmes taking place in the IWC, the Dublin Writer's Museum, the Goethe Institut, the Central Library in the ILAC Centre and Queen's Visitor Centre at Queen's University, Belfast. - See Weekend 13 and the special report in today's paper for details.
Sadbh