How many times have you come across a book described as a ‘tour de force‘? Did the description impress you so much you reached for your wallet then and there, determined that nothing would stand in your way and you would have the book or die trying?

I’m guessing not.

When I was a teenager I read a lot of science fiction, and every second novel had these three words plastered in gold print on the cover, or tucked away somewhere in the blurb on the back. The words were often in quotes and attributed to no one - free flowing as if from the mouth of God herself.

My favourite online dictionary describes a ‘tour de force‘ as: ‘A feat requiring great virtuosity or strength, often deliberately undertaken for its difficulty.’ No doubt books not described in this way were written casually, merely tossed out quickly one Sunday afternoon without any great effort on the part of the writer. Applying the literal meaning of the phrase would surely suggest that intricate works of physics or mathematics, and even boring volumes on the complexities of the Inland Revenue, are far more deserving of the title than short novels such as Heart of Darkness.

There seems to be a system in the use of this phrase by publishers of fiction. The novel should be not less than five hundred pages in length, otherwise it cannot truly have required any great strength or endurance to produce. Where possible, it should have a picture of a spaceship on the cover or if not a spaceship, at least some sort of futuristic scene that suggests an impressive imagination on the part of the writer.

I encountered one exception to this rule a few months ago in the form of The Quincunx, a novel set in nineteenth century England without a spaceship in sight. No doubt its extraordinary length of twelve hundred and forty eight pages made up for the lack of any form of space age setting. By the same token it can be deduced that The Count of Monte Cristo, at over eleven hundred pages, has earned the title ‘tour de force,’ while the more modestly sized The Black Tulip was merely a good read.

The lesson to be learned from all this is that if you want your new novel to be awarded this covetous title, it should be of great length and set somewhere in the distant future. If your work takes place in current times, or god forbid at some point in the recent past, it must have a truly exceptional word count, somewhere along the lines of Clarissa, before laying any sort of claim to the title. The advantage of producing a novel of such staggering size is that no one will ever read it to the end, and anyone who makes the attempt will be convinced long before they quit of your ‘great virtuosity and strength,’ making the book without doubt a ‘tour de force.’