That B&N gift card I got for my birthday is almost spent. I got a little impulsive last night and bought five–count ‘em, five!–books, four of which were in hardcover. I love books in hardcover, and it’s a rare treat to be able to buy a pile of them all at once without a shred of guilt.

Two of the newest five are debut novels by authors I’ve never heard of. Their book jackets did a bang-up job at being book jackets; that is to say, at attracting my attention and getting the book into my hand. I thought I might take a look at the various covers, then, in this special Birthday Edition of Under the Covers.

I’ll start with a cover that I’ve already written about: the cover of Colm Tóibín’s latest novel, Brooklyn.

Should you elect not to follow the link to my earlier post, I’ll summarize quite briefly: Yawn.

When I ran across Brooklyn back in May, I neglected to flip the book over. If I had, I’d have found another snoozefest:

And yet I can’t help thinking that if the images had been switched, the cover would have been more effective. For a start, the photo on the back cover is infinitely more in keeping with the book’s title. Imagine if the photo had been enlarged to take up most, but not all, of the front cover, and then a bit of Photoshop trickery had placed the title and author’s name on the blank white wall, outlined below:

That might have been a bit more interesting, and the book’s success wouldn’t have hinged quite so much on the author’s name recognition (how likely is that, really?), plus a plug from Oprah, buried at the bottom of the back cover’s list of blurbs.

I think Divisadero would also have benefited from a flip-flop. I quite like the photo on the front cover:

But the divided and shuffled version on the back cover is, I think, much more evocative:

And I swear, I’m not just saying that because an early design for my own book used precisely the same trick:

(A tiny, tiny vestige of this design remains: the oval that surrounds “A novel” on the spine. If you open the PDF and zoom in really close, you can see ripples in dark water.)

Having finished–and having greatly enjoyed–Dan Chaon’s first novel, You Remind Me of Me, I was thrilled to see that his second novel is already out. I would have bought it no matter what the cover looked like, but as it happens, I quite like it.

The design is simplicity itself. The dark clouds intimate that you’re not in for a joyride, exactly, but the pale blue of the title and the plainness of the text keeps the whole thing from being too heavy. I’m particularly pleased that the horizon forms a baseline for “Chaon.”

Of course, this whole treatment may be just a little too easy: photo of clouds, sans-serif typeface, badda-boom-badda-bing, done. But I like it, even so. If all the elements are well-chosen–and these are–then a design like this works–and for me, at least, this does.

By comparison, this is a near miss:

It’s so close. I like the way the title text gets smaller, as if vanishing into the distance. Again, the horizon forms a baseline for the author’s name. The desolation of the outback landscape is evocative.

But then there’s the fire. For a start, it’s just entirely too literal. Yes, the word “fire” occurs in the title, but that doesn’t mean there has to be a picture of fire on the cover. Worse, it just doesn’t look right. If the designer used Photoshop to add it in, then the knockout and transparency were done really well. For all that, it doesn’t look real. It lies on top as if two photographs were smashed together, not as if there’s an actual fire. It’s distracting. And, um, does fire throw a shadow? Because it kind of looks like this fire is supposed to be throwing a shadow.

After the Fire is one of the two debut novels I picked up, in spite of my qualms about the fire.

The other debut was this (and I have no qualms about it):

I love everything about this–the color, the type, the stark graphics that put me in mind of wayang and The Year of Living Dangerously–and also the deep forests and tangled gardens of certain fairy tales.

Here’s the whole jacket:

I haven’t done a microscopic comparison, but it looks to me as if each of those groupings of vines is unique. It’s lovely that the tendrils encircle the publisher’s logo on the spine, as if it’s a bit of statuary neglected in an overgrown garden.

There is, frankly, no reason why I should like the cover of the Annie Dillard novel I bought.

But so help me, I do like it. Maybe I’m developing a weakness for sans-serifs.* Maybe it puts me in mind of the modern, understated designs for Vintage Classics. Maybe the color scheme reminds me of my childhood back in the ’70s. I can’t quite explain it, because I look at this thing and think I should probably hate it. Quite the contrary, I like it a lot.

And on the flip side, I feel I should be far more charmed by Little Children than I am.

There is, for example, the artificial-looking grass, which makes perfect sense, given the novel’s theme of suburban angst and self-estrangement. The goldfish nicely and subtly evoke–for me, at least–the anxieties of childhood,** and that is perfect, too. The colors are great, and the type is … acceptable.

So … why don’t I love this cover?

I’ve seen the Major Motion Picture based on this novel, and images from the film are inextricably linked in my mind to the novel. This is not to say that I’d prefer the off-putting DVD cover–far from it–but I reluctantly admit that I somehow preferred the movie tie-in version, which did, after all, feature of a glimpse of the hotness of Patrick Wilson (NSFW).

Hotness aside, I think the darker palette of the movie tie-in cover better fits my idea of what this book is going to be like. Maybe after I’ve actually read it, my mind will change.

Unfortunately, I have so little to say about Property that I’m tempted to skip it.

So, yeah, I’m pretty much going to move along before it puts me to sleep, and talk instead about the first book of this bunch that I’ve chosen to read.†

I’m a hundred pages from the end of this book, and it’s entirely equal to its hype. Just to pluck a few phrases from the back cover, the book’s “elegant prose”–”unendingly beautiful,” “provocative,” “psychologically pitch-perfect”–”makes for a striking read.” It’s a testament to the clarity and precision of O’Neill’s writing that he can pull off a flashback within a flashback. Even though I can’t say that I understand all of the bits about cricket, they’re written so well and with such affection that I’ve actually bothered to visit this site and see if I can learn something about it.

In short, do read this book, if you haven’t already.

As for the cover, it has one thing going for it: the immense sky crushing the tiny skyline. The wisp of cloud is great; the haze of smog around the city is great; the photo is just damn great. I don’t mind the treatment of the title–it’s at least eye-catching, and it’s a nice touch that it’s matte when all else is glossy–but what sense does it make, really? And why is “a novel” floating in the middle of the sky in a big red dot?

I greatly prefer the UK paperback cover. But whatever else the US version lacks or has wrong with it, it’s at least better than the hardcover, which is so antiquated-looking, so unappealing, that it’s a wonder it didn’t somehow sink the book entirely.

* Not Arial, though. Perish the thought!

** When I was a very small child–certainly under the age of four–my mother and I bought goldfish from the pet store at the mall. On the way home, the bag sprung a leak, and we had to stop in at a local bank and get a refill out of a water fountain.

† Yes, for those of you who think that I merely acquire books and never read them, I actually intend to read all of these.