The view from behind

Legend of a Suicide – David Vann (Penguin, 2008)

This book has a gorgeous front cover with blue and red embossed foil type and an image of a stylised fish decorated with a pattern of abstract shapes and mini pistols – the only element that has any relationship to the word 'suicide' in the title. The opulent foil has been done away with for the back cover, but the fish motif is repeated and acts as a frame for the blurb to sit within. This has the effect of creating a pleasing balance between text and image within the boundaries of the cover. The burden of the barcode weighs heavily on the fish's tail however.






Ghost Colonies: Failed utopias, forgotten exiles and abandoned outposts of empire – Ed Wright (Pier 9, 2009)

I really like this back cover too. The use of a full image background is successful as there are then not a great number of competing elements on the cover. The image sits behind and the blurb can do its work. Spot lamination, which is also used to highlight the text on the front cover, is used here for the boxed blurb and helps it to pop out from the muted, matt image.


Anno Domini 2000 or Woman's Destiny – Julius Vogel (Exisle Publishing, 2000)

Horrendous! Bullet points for fiction – so very bad. This is most certainly not a great work of literature, so it might be a bit disingenuous to write a tantalising blurb about the plot of this book because the reader would feel pretty cheated upon reading. The book is interesting for the ideas behind it, however, so I'd concede that describing Vogel's visions on the back cover is the probably the most appropriate approach to content there. But it remains that the two columns of bullet points are a poor display choice – not in the least because the bottom two points get lost in the encroaching image. The choice of typefaces also feels wrong, particularly as inside the book several pages of the original edition of 1889 are replicated, which makes it feel historical. I think that a much more attractive book would have resulted overall if this idea had been followed throughout.