IT’S RUBBISH, the new novel by D. B. C. Pierre, Ludmilla’s Broken English. This book “is to fiction what Jeremy Clarkson is to the English essay”, in the judgment of our own critic, John Sutherland. Literary Review in Private Eye suggested that Pierre had the book “dictated to him by aliens while being gang-probed in their space capsule”.

From Radio 4 to the red-tops, the consensus has condemned it for snarled story-lines, failed ambitions, gratuitious violence and satirical invention that is apparently as subtle as boy-band lyrics. Pierre’s literary reputation, sky-high after he became one of the most popular Booker prizewinners, has been ripped to shreds like a rib-eye steak in a tank of piranhas.

Of course it has. Ludmilla’s Broken English is a second novel. An author can’t win with a second novel. If your first novel was a flop, you know that you’ll be dead in the water if you don’t knock ’em dead with the second.

If your first novel was a dazzling success, everyone expects you to excel yourself. And, of course, you gave your first novel everything you’d got. Either way, unbearable pressure. I feel for DBC. I’ve walked this mile in his shoes. My first book was a 500-page distillation of my life to date. After it became an international bestseller, I sat at my computer and saw nothing on the screen but the six figures of the advance for my second book fading in and out with an eerie whistle like the titles of a junk sci-fi TV series.

With great black clouds of Schadenfreude gathering over successful debut novelists, it’s a miracle anyone ever writes a second book at all. They say that Don Quixote is so long because Miguel de Cervantes was desperate to postpone the end and the inevitable expectations of another book. After The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan began her second novel seven times and tore up every attempt. After The Secret History Donna Tartt could not finish another book for ten years. After A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius David Eggars published his second novel online, which might be considered the coward’s way out.

Love may be lovelier the second time around, but literature just turns ugly. Authors who take the no guts, no glory option, and push themselves to excess after a successful debut, get slaughtered for their courage. Remember the rage that greeted Zadie Smith’s second novel, The Autograph Man, condemned as a “flailing, noisy hash”? Writers who throttle back their ambitions can expect no better. While Smith was savaged for going over the top, Trezza Azzopardi’s second novel was written off as odd, forgettable and joyless, and one vinegary reviewer recommended it only for “readers who found early Anita Brookner too brassy”.

Among writers, the rough ride awaiting the second-time novelist is known by the uninventive acronym of SNS (second novel syndrome) and acknowledged by its own literary award, the Encore Prize. Looking at past Encore winners, who include Colm Toibin, A. L. Kennedy, Ali Smith and another Times reviewer, Christine Koning, it can be deduced that a writer has a better chance of acclaim with a second novel if their first was no more than a modest hit, so they proceed with high ambition but low expectations.

Debut success, on the other hand, seems to scorch the earth around it for at least one cycle of creation. While the more arrogant writers simply get off their faces on high-grade hubris, sensitive authors can slither into depression. Alex Garland, who delivered his second novel a full ten years after he began The Beach, said he had many times when he thought: “F*** this, I’ve had enough of writing. I don’t like the book world. I don’t like most books, even. I don’t like sitting on my own in a room for hours on end.”

A significant proportion of successful first-time novelists never get their second written at all. Harper Lee has never followed up To Kill A Mockingbird. Margaret Mitchell wrote the most successful novel of the 20th century, Gone With The Wind, then never wrote another word and died in a road accident eight years later. So many great novelists chose to be one-hit wonders rather than take the crap for a second book that the writer and former publisher Richard Cohen plans to write a book about them all.

Given that the phenomenon is so widely recognised, it does reviewers no credit to join the kind of feeding frenzy that is churning bloody water around D. B. C. Pierre. A second novel is like February: one of God’s serious mistakes and something you just have to get through before life can move on.

Celia Brayfield is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Brunel University. Her latest novel is Wild Weekend (TimeWarner Books)

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