‘It doesn’t,’ she said, looking self-conscious, and that’s when I realized it was just abdominal rumblings, and I wondered whether Tershie would really prefer living with a thin bald camel to a plump sleek walrus.

NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

Dear Ms Mendosa,

Thank you for your manuscript, Voice of the Mangrove, and the bundle of notes. East Caribbean dollars are quite colourful, aren’t they? I don’t think my little bank in Shrimphaven had ever seen any before, and it took them ages to work out the exchange rate.

I have now read your novel (which wasn’t easy, due to the ultra-thin paper and the fact that it was single-spaced, though I do understand about the weight being an issue when you are posting it from abroad).

Yes, I can quite see that your life experience is just as valid as Isabel Allende’s, although I think your manuscript is reading rather too much like an autobiography at the moment.

But I’m sure readers will sympathize with your heroine, Maria, as she struggles to better herself, even when at sixteen she marries that rich old American, Jerome, in order to escape Cuba.

While I expect that the later episode set on Antigua – where on a complete impulse she suddenly pushes him down a blowhole and escapes into a new life with the insurance money – is entirely fictional, I think you will have to make poor Jerome a bit more than just fat and old in order to get your readers to feel that his demise was justified at this point.

Apart from these minor quibbles, which I have expanded on at more length in the enclosed critique, I also wondered why you had chosen to write in English when your first language is so clearly Spanish.

I am not saying that your English isn’t absolutely brilliant, considering, but there is quite a large market for novels in Spanish, and if it were a success then it would probably be translated later. Just a suggestion – I mean, it may be worth trying a Spanish version first.

Anyway, I hope you find my critique helpful.

With best wishes for your success,

Tina Devino

A Guardian review for Spring Breezes! It said it was a ‘subtle blend of gardening and eroticism’.

Well, I do my best.

I sent copies of it to Miracle, Tim the Suit and Libby Garnett, the Salubrious marketing person, just in case they missed it.