| Retired
civil servant strikes it rich with debut novel,
32 years in the writing
John Ezard
Wednesday February 18, 2004
The Guardian
A retired civil servant living on a British Council pension
has landed a deal
worth several hundred thousand dollars for his first novel,
which has been
hailed as a masterpiece, more than a year before its publication.
"I am utterly astonished," Charles Chadwick, 71,
said yesterday. "The phrase
'beyond my wildest dreams' has now taken on meaning for me."
The money is for the US rights to Chadwick's 300,000-word
"epic story of
everyday life", It's All Right Now, which his agent,
Caroline Dawnay, said
yesterday had "the stamp of a great novel".
Ms Dawnay and Chadwick's British publisher, Faber & Faber,
declined to say how
much his UK advance was. But Faber took the extremely rare
step for a reputable
publisher of describing a book, which is still going through
its editing stages,
as "an exceptional first novel".
The writer's editor at Faber, Jonathan Riley, said: "As
a first novel it is
astonishing; as the product of a lifetime's experience it
becomes explicable."
Chadwick, who lives in London, said his success so far showed
it was "possible
to write an ordinary novel about ordinary people's lives".
He embarked on the work as a British Council official in Nigeria
in 1972.
His hero, Tom Ripple, is an insignificant cog in an import/
export company.
Married in the early 1970s to an ideologically-minded social
worker, he lives
near the North Circular road in London and has a paedophile
neighbour. His son
grows up gay, but marries. The tale ends with the 2000 millennium
celebrations.
Yesterday Faber spoke of a "beautiful and funny novel"
whose hero is "a modern,
bewildered Everyman and one of the most brilliantly realised
characters in
recent fiction".
Mr Riley called it a "very English response" to
John Updike's Rabbit novels in
its author's "love of language and lethal eye and ear".
Chadwick also worked as an overseas civil servant in Africa.
His British Council
postings spanned London, Kenya, Brazil, Canada and Poland,
where he was a
council director. He retired in 1992.
He has written several other novels, which publishers rejected.
Ms Dawnay, who also represents Nick Hornby and Alain de Botton,
began reading
parts of It's All Right Now as the author wrote or rewrote
them five years ago.
Chadwick said: "One is conscious of having been rescued
from oblivion by
Caroline, especially if one is getting on a bit in years -
and especially if the
whole novel is so big."
His book will be published in May 2005.
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