The first book I ever reviewed was already a huge bestseller in America. I read the book. Hated it. Wrote a very funny, very negative piece.
Since then, I've heard about writers reviewing to return a favour, reviews written in revenge, authors so devastated by a bad review that they never wrote again. When you think about it, reviewing's a pig of a job. Someone else's years of hard work given over to an amateur, a fellow novelist with an (always strong) opinion in a very small town where everyone knows everyone else and there are thousands of overlapping agendas. Think about that next time you volunteer.
I was one of five judges reading 80-plus books for a first novel prize last year. I started out reading each book carefully, wanting to do justice to the hopes and dreams of the first-time novelist. I read about 12 that way, as the other submissions piled up. By book 18, I was skimmin. By book 25 I was giving each book three chapters.
After that, I became Attila the Book Hater. Some I rejected because I didn't like the covers. Overlong acknowledgments went straight into the rejection pile. Luckily there were five judges, so we could all go back and reread when necessary. But still. Talk about a passion killer.
I've since learned that my tastes don't always agree with my fellow judges, or with Richard and Judy's, or with other readers', and I'm certainly not interested in ruining anyone's life for the fun of it.
A journalist friend told me about reviewing an Elmore Leonard novel negatively, then meeting the author a few months later at a literary festival. The critic found him dignified, charming, and modest, writing and speaking with as much care and professionalism at 84 as he'd done for the past 50 years. The flaws of the novel seemed suddenly insignificant, my friend told me, and he felt ashamed.
I got lucky. For one reason or another my negative review didn't run. A year or two later I met the author, and he turned out to be shy, unable quite to believe his luck, and really not a person whose feelings you'd want to hurt even if he hadn't (in my humble opinion) written a book worthy of selling like hot cakes. I blessed the editor who'd binned my review. And as it happened, the book sold like hot cakes on this side of the Atlantic, too.
Nowadays, I only review books I really like. It's cowardly, I know, but I figure it's not my job to make people unhappy. I'll leave that to the professionals. This week I wrote a review of Dina Rabinovitch's Take Off Your Party Dress. It took the better part of three days to do it properly, but it was worth it - a subject I know lots about, a powerful memoir, a good cause (all profits going to cancer research). That's better.
