Not really Perfect
We have just received a warm review for a new title, Kind of Perfect, by Linda Urban. The review will appear in the next edition of Fiction Focus, which should be in schools at the end of the month. The reviewer really enjoyed the title and warmed to the young protagonist, Zoe, who dreams of playing piano at the Sydney Opera House one day. So far, so good.
Published in Sydney by ABC Books and with several other Australian allusions, such as NRMA, scattered throughout the text you would be forgiven for thinking that this is an Australian book.
But look more closely. The only hint that all is not as it seems are are the words on the verso of the title page :
‘A Crooked Kind of Perfect’ by Linda Urban. Copyright (c) 2007. Published by arrangement with Harcourt, Inc.
Not ‘First published as ‘A Crooked Kind of Perfect’ because, well, it wasn’t technically the same book. In the US edition, Zoe yearns to play at Carnegie Hall and the setting is distinctly American. But nowhere in this Australian edition is this clear. Is this just clever marketing, or is it actually misleading to readers?
BTW, the local cover isn’t a patch on the original, so why have they bothered?
And it begs the question: Do readers in the UK have Zoe playing at the Royal Festival Hall? If we were cynical, we’d start to think that this might be the beginning of a globalisation trend, with copy editors trawling pages of texts published in one country to change all original references to local ones. Surely not.
We have written to Linda Urban for her thoughts. We’ll keep you posted.
