How to Sell [Paperback]

"How to sell" is the story of a 16 year old boy seeking a new life in the US who is introduced by his older brother into what appears to be the lucrative world of the jewellery and Rolex watch sales team of a successful Dallas discount store....

The novel is one of those "can't put down until its finished" books.... the in-depth knowledge and detail imparted to the reader of the inside goings-on of a slightly below the law commercial practice certainly kept me riveted from cover to cover. Despite these finer details, in fact probably because of them, a fast pace is created such that you feel like you're being sucked along for the ride with the narrator... at least to begin with.

My only criticism is that the detail, and along with it the pace, isn't quite maintained to the end.... the story almost loses its way, as if the author is out of his comfort zone when he gets away from the jewellery trade and into character development....

I will certainly keep an eye out for more novels by Clancy Martin; it will be interesting to see if he can maintain the level of reader involvement if he attempts another subject (I've since found out that he has worked in the jewellery business which explains a lot)...

One for the recommended list.

Clancy Martin is, on the surface, a respectable associate professor of philosophy in his early forties in the University of Missouri, Kansas City. One would assume, therefore, that the material for his debut novel, How to Sell, a high-spirited peek at the drug fuelled, swindle-filled world of the 1980s jewellery trade, came from an active imagination. A clue to the fact that this book is based on Martin's real life comes in the information that his post grad dissertation was on deception. It then transpires that Martin's own experiences mirror those of the protagonist of his debut novel. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

How to Sell, which was published a month ago, comes with cover plaudits from Zadie Smith and Jonathan Franzen. It is a coming of age story mired in the glitzy vacuum of the 1980s.

Bobby Clark, a 16 year-old from Calgary, Canada, is expelled from high school for thieving. Instead of trying to get into another high school, he decides to take his older brother Jim up on his offer of coming to Texas and working in the same jewellery store as him. Bobby's options are limited - his parents are divorced, his father is a hippy dippy type who 'soul travels' to astral beings for advice in between being a guru/minister and womaniser in Florida. Bobby's girlfriend in Calgary practically pushes him to leave town, entangled as she is in an affair with another boy. So Bobby flies to Texas and starts work in the same shop as Jim. He quickly falls into the hedonistic lifestyle - massive bucks, hookers, and a diet of cocaine and crystal meth. He also falls in love with Jim's girlfriend Lisa. Not that Jim seems to mind - he's married and has more girls on his hands than he knows what to do with. Metaphorically speaking.

When the jewellery emporium is forced to close, Jim and Bobby go out on their own in the same business. With them goes 'The Polack', a hard-nosed, beautiful saleswoman. The cast is enriched further by various suppliers, business colleagues, tradesmen and other colourful characters, some scrupulous and others less so.

How To Sell is a fast-paced, sometimes exhilarating novel that holds a coke-smeared mirror to the values of the '80s, where money, sex and sales were the forces that made the world go round. It is not literary fiction by any means - it is written with simple, immediate prose and is a speedy, easy read. But at a time when so many are suffering the effects of the greed of a few, it's sobering - and entertaining - to have much of the ugly side of the high life revealed. There are shocking insights into the world of gem trading - the cheating, lying and stealing are so routine that when Bobby is actually honest with a single mother customer he feels sorry for, she initially doesn't believe him. The frauds are related in a jaw-droppingly matter-of-fact way: customers' watches brought in for repair are sold as new to other customers searching for that brand, counterfeit goods are fobbed off as the genuine article, fistfuls of hundred dollar bills are swiped from the cash box each day, receipts are regularly discarded so that large payments may be pocketed, customers are sold precious metals and storage space which don't exist (the gilt equivalent of a Ponzi scheme), 'antique' pieces of jewelery are hastily assembled in back rooms, and new price tags with far higher prices are substituted for genuine ones in order to make the customer feel they're snapping up a bargain when they purchase at the usual price. Here's a sample:

'What you did was, you sold the customer of precious metal as an investment, and sold him the security of storing it in your safes.... ''We can sell the metal at below the market price because we buy it off the street and smelt it ourselves, and it is in our interest to sell it below market value to you sir, because then when you want to buy a diamond tennis bracelet for your tenth anniversary, you will call me first.'' Customers paid a nominal fee of fifty dollars per thousand ounces per year to store it in our safes. We never actually bought the metal. And that was how you made your money in it.'

If I have any criticisms, it's that the female characters are not developed as fully as the male ones. Lisa's true feelings for Jim and for Bobby remain opaque, and though there are hints of the complexities of The Polack, they are not expanded as they could be.

So how much of this is based on Martin's own experiences? Well, he worked in a jewellery store with his older brother, and then moved with him to open their own store. The drugs and sex were also a part of daily life, though Martin admits that he may have exaggerated for effect. Martin's father was also an eccentric, and, like Bobby, Martin's own marriage broke up.

The impact of such a wild youth has not left Martin unscathed. In a piece on him in Newsweek in May of this year, he admitted to having felt suicidal during his days in the jewellery industry, and even hinted, sadly, that those self harming urges were still present as recently as earlier this year. Martin seems to have learned the hard way that all that's gold does not glitter.

The novel has a tragic ending which puts an end to Bobby's life in the gemstone business. Whether Martin himself pushed the ejector button on his previous career as suddenly is unknown. But it seems that his new life as a writer and academic suits him. How to Sell is an accessible, eye opening, headlong tumble through a life alien to most people. Thankfully the greed and cult of self of the '80s are over (except perhaps for bankers and MPs), but Martin's debut is an adrenaline-fuelled nostalgic trip back..
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