Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover: Sometimes it’s worth looking beyond the cover to see what a book is really about.

Don’t judge a book by its cover. Isn’t that what they say? Well, whoever ‘they’ might be, they just happen to be right. There’s often far more beyond the cover, or the title come to that. I’ve just read a book titled ‘We Bought a Zoo’. At first glance you would think this is essentially a story about doing something out of the ordinary, taking a chance, following a dream. And it is, mostly. However, a closer analysis of the narrative suggests that this is also a story about losing someone you love and how you cope with the loss.

I mention this because ‘I am the Enemy You Killed, My Friend’ is very much in the ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ category. Just like the zoo story, it’s also about losing a loved one and coping with the loss. So why does it have what might appear to a misleading title? The answer is simple. Like many books, there are many elements to the story; the title is derived from one element of the story that links the other themes.

In this changing world of book publishing where the reader is exposed to a far greater number of books, judging a book by its cover has never – it might appear – been more relevant. Not only are there more books, there is an increasing number of new publishers and debut novelists vying for the reader’s attention and the cover provides the first screening option. One glance at a cover is very often enough to determine whether you flip the book over and take a look at the blurb or put it back on the shelf.  But sometimes it’s worth looking beyond the cover to see what the book is really about.