A strange assembly ... tomorrow's stars as predicted by Waterstone's. Photograph: Fergus Greer
Emily Gravett, who has written a book about a bear, is the most intriguing of a roster of predicted literary superstars that Waterstone's has come up with to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the opening of its first shop.
It's a slightly odd list because many of the people on it, from Susannah Clarke to Robert MacFarlane, Charlotte Mendelson and Maggie O'Farrell - in fact, a large proportion of the total list - already are literary stars.
Only a handful can be described as "full of promise". I guess the stars are going to have to pull their socks up and become superstars instead of plain old stars, and those full of promise start going supernova pretty damn quick.
Stars, superstars, superdooperstars... the spaces between these definitions are credit-card thin, and frankly the whole business of list-making pretty spurious so far as authentic literary value is concerned. These lists are about media, not reading, and media these days is more an enemy of promise than a friend to the writer.
Actually, that's wrong. It's a friend to promise, an enemy to mid-career writers and if it still gives a bugger when you're sixty, you should shout hallelujah and make your quietus while the going's good.
But back to Gravett's bear. She's already published two books: Wolves and Meerkat Mail. The interesting thing about her latest work, Orange Pear Apple Bear, is that there are only five words in it. That is, Orange Pear Apple Bear - and one other on the last page of the book.
So it's very strange to find it on the same list as Susannah Clarke's novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which is massive and very literary, or Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind, which is fantastically sophisticated, again in an essentially literary, word-based way? It seems like a category mistake.
That's not to take anything away from Gravett, whose wonderful bear changes himself into apples and pears as a party trick. As for that last word, you'll have to go and buy it to find out what it is. Or I guess you could slip into a Waterstone's and have a peek.
