Ah yes, what writer doesn’t dream of an instant bestseller – prfereably for one’s first novel. But “the truth is that the jackpot theory of literature only works up to a point, and, particularly, in an impressionable marketplace like America where barrow-loads of fashionable books are bought but not read. Most of the time, in Britain, the so-called ‘overnight success’ usually turns out, on closer inspection, to be the well-deserved fruition of a painstaking apprenticeship.”