I’ve just spotted a review for one of our books. It isn’t well-written; it isn’t kind and it suggests that whoever wrote it simply didn’t ‘get’ the concept of the book. In an hour or so the author will spot it and phone me in a distressed state. I will then spend a sizeable part of my morning calming them down and pointing to the good feedback, while trying to avoid phrases like, you can’t win them all or no publicity is bad publicity.
While, thankfully, these kind of reviews are rare, I do wish reviewers would sign up to some sort of Hippocratic writers’ oath that states: first do no harm. In these anonymous times, when trolls have stopped harassing billy goats gruff and crawled into the digital age, there is a level of poison visible in the world that used to be reserved for the nastier gossip columns. Now for a confession: I have been guilty of writing a piercing review or two of my own in the past.
Why? Because it’s easy. Because some books have enraged me. And, all right, because I’ve been having a bad day and wanted to take it out on someone. I don’t do it now. Like Kevin Costner leaving his civilization behind and learning about the brutal, poignant world of the Lakota Sioux, I now live on the other side of the great publishing divide and have gone full-on native.
Of course, there are those who will argue that if you put it out there, you have to expect the rough with the smooth. And, to some degree, this is true. Having a hide thicker than a rhino sitting inside a Challenger battle tank is a prerequisite of starting a literary career. However, the review should bear in mind that there is a person behind the book, a person who has feelings, a person who has bared a little bit of their soul and sent it into the world, a person who cannot answer you back.
Because, dear reader, that is the unspoken downside of being a writer. It just isn’t the done thing to respond to a review (unless it’s with tears of gladness in your eyes). Like the royal family, a writer is supposed to adopt a culture of never complain, never explain.
So here I humbly offer some suggested rules for that next review. If you want to say that a book is boring, ask yourself if it is possible that someone else will have a different take. Personally, I love Susanna Clarke’s dream-like Robinson Crusoe-esque novel Piranesi yet I have read reviews calling it tedious and inferior. I’m going to strongly disagree with those reviewers on Susanna’s behalf. Because she can’t. Wording a review to show that this is your personal opinion is much more honest than making it sound as though you are honing in on a universal truth. Don’t agree? Ask yourself this: at a dinner party do you hold up your hand and say, thanks, not for me, when offered the asparagus plate, or do you launch into a diatribe on the evils of serving vegetables that taste like hate and berate your hostess on the stupidity of serving them?