Fig Tree lands Quinn's 'brilliant debut' in four-way auction

Fig Tree has landed The Whalebone Theatre, a “brilliant, beguiling” debut novel by Joanna Quinn, in a four-publisher auction.

UK and Commonwealth rights were signed from Clare Alexander of Aitken Alexander by new publishing director Helen Garnons Williams in her first deal since joining from Fourth Estate. The book, billed as a “brilliant, beguiling novel about family and inheritance, courage and loss”, will be published in hardback as the imprint's lead debut in summer 2022.

Its synopsis explains: “Chilcombe is a crumbling dark Dorset mansion where feckless parents and briskly affectionate servants largely ignore the three children of the house. This little tribe, led by the fearless Cristabel, grow up wild in the country, educating themselves through books appropriated from the library and eavesdropping at doors. When a whale is washed ashore, Cristabel plants her flag and claims it as her own, and as it rots on the beach, the Seagrave children create a theatre within its skeleton. A raggle taggle group of house guests and locals are drawn into Cristabel’s productions as her sister Flossie (known as The Veg) plays musical accompaniment and her longed-for younger brother, Digby, emerges as the star.

"But as the children grow to adulthood and the Second World War begins, Flossie is left alone to somehow keep Chilcombe afloat while Cristabel and Digby are drawn into more dangerous play acting as they separately join the shadowy British intelligence operations working undercover in Occupied France.”

Garnons-Williams said: “The Whalebone Theatre is an absolute joy to read and its beating heart is Cristabel, a heroine who leaps off the page – ferociously — and is impossible not to love. I am thrilled that Joanna has chosen Fig Tree to be the home of her magical debut. She is a wonderful writer who brings to her novel an inventive, mischievous, contemporary sensibility. It is a truly immersive novel, packed with incident and adventure, but I also love the way it explores the impact of these incidents: the long shadow of loss, the tension between tradition and modernity and the way character can be formed as much by neglect as by attention.”

Quinn has previously had short stories published by the White Review, Comma Press, New Welsh Review and the Bridport Prize. She was chosen as an emerging writer as part of the Arvon/Jerwood mentoring scheme and was one of four writers shortlisted for the national Arts Foundation Fellowship for Short Stories. She is currently working towards a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, where Francis Spufford is her supervisor.

She said: “I'm so excited to be working with Helen and everyone at Fig Tree on the publication of my first novel. To think that a story I have worked on for years, and characters that have kept me company all through lockdown, are now to make their way out into the world feels slightly unreal, like a very lovely dream come true.”