Between the covers: What's really going on in the world of books

If Charlotte Rampling should win the Best Actress Oscar for her role as Kate Mercer in the film 45 Years, we will say: “It was The Independent on Sunday wot won it.” The film was made as an indirect result of a short paperback review by Laurence Phelan that ran in these pages in 2005.

It was of an anthology of short fiction called Bracket, the third from the publisher Comma Press. Its founder and editorial manager, Ra Page, takes up the story: “The review was spotted by a young film-maker, Andrew Haigh, who bought a copy, got in touch with us and made a short film adaptation of one of the stories in it called “Five Miles Out’”, he writes.

“So good was that short film, I sent him David Constantine’s Under the Dam, and suggested he look at “In Another Country”. Anyway, six or seven years later … and [the adaptation of that story] 45 Years finally came out.”

Haigh continues: “I was instantly obsessed by ‘In Another Country’. It was so clear and precise, so simple and yet so profound. The story lodged itself in my brain and would not leave.”

Aside from its Oscar nomination for Rampling, 45 Years is also nominated for a Bafta for Outstanding British Film and three London Evening Standard awards, and has picked up 14 national and international awards already.

Back in the day, The Independent and Independent on Sunday’s tagline used to be “Great minds don’t think alike”, but sometimes they do. In his original, 219-word review which inspired Haigh to take notice of Comma Press, Phelan also picked out the story “Five Miles Out” by Sarah Tierney, which he called “a quietly powerful piece about a girl on a camping holiday trying not to think about her anorexic sister dying in hospital”. Should any current young film-makers be reading The Independent on Sunday now, looking for inspiration for an Oscar-worthy film, this week’s paperback reviews are on page 20.

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Congratulations to the BBC’s Security Correspondent Frank Gardner, who has sold rights to three thrillers to Transworld. His debut novel, Crisis, introduces Luke Carlton, an ex-commando turned Secret Service officer who is in a race against time to prevent a terror attack on London. It will be published in June. Transworld says Gardner brings a “chilling frisson of authenticity” to the subject.