On Being Reviewed

My novel Unwrapped Sky finally hit the stores yesterday, but reviews have been coming out for six weeks or so. There have been very good ones, and very bad ones. There have has been at least one in between, I think. For the good ones, the Scifinow one by Jack Parsons is pretty nice. For the bad ones, Liz Bourke’s on my own publisher’s website is worth it.

It’s commonly agreed that a writer shouldn’t comment on reviews of their own work. It’s bad form and looks narcissistic. Here I wanted to reflect a little on the process of being reviewed, of having a book you’ve written out there, available for all to comment on. Though I’ve published internationally before, Unwrapped Sky is of a significantly different scale. It has been reviewed on major websites, in the newspaper of the SF field called Locus, by people I’ve never met and will possibly never meet. It’s still a small stage, but it’s a significantly larger one than I’m used to. There are plenty of writers who don’t read reviews at all, and I can see why. But in the modern world, where you’re meant to get your own work out there – by tweeting, Facebooking, and so on – it’s hard to avoid them. Aren’t you meant to let people know about reviews?

And if so, which ones?

What is a review, after all? Reviews are going to be different, depending on space and audience. A 500 word review in a newspaper is going to be significantly different from a review essay. But in general, my own attitude to reviewing has been this: To begin with, I’ve never written anything I wouldn’t say to someone’s face. I’ve tried to put a work into context – where it sits in the field and in the social space that surrounds it, where it sits in an author’s oeuvre and their life – and to use it to comment on that context. I’ve tried to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of a book (and all books have both strengths and weaknesses). I’ve also indicated whether I think the book is good or bad, in my opinion, but also to allow a reader to know whether they will like it or not. People read for different reasons, after all. Some for pure escapism, some for intellectual interest, and so on. My review of George R.R. Martin’s Dance of Dragons tried to do some of these things in a short amount of space, while my review essay of Lucky McKee’s feminist horror film, The Woman, did so on a more expansive scale.

This is not, of course, the approach of everyone. Many reviewers openly admit they’re not professionals, while many professionals seem remarkably amateurish: if you’re going to be unremittingly negative about someone’s book, you might want to read some of their previous work, so you can put it in context; if you accuse them of sexism, you’d better know if they are a feminist (they may have written something sexist, but at least you’ll understand what they were trying to do). If you claim they’re racist, you might want to find out if they’re Indigenous, or African-American, and so on.

What then, are you sharing when you share a review? What should you be sharing? The line between publicity and the personal becomes awfully blurred here. You’ll piss your friends off if all you do is bang on about how good your own work is, for starters, but then many social media followers aren’t your friends, but are interested in your work.

What about the negative reviews? How should you make sense of them? How should they affect you?

Once you’re on a larger stage, people feel no compunction about attacking someone’s work. In one way, this is admirable, for in smaller literary circles there is often too much niceness and not enough courage. As Jeff Sparrow – with whom I’ve discussed this a number of times – argued in a piece online about ‘anonymous reviewing’:

The great political battles will roll on, irrespective of what happens in the books pages. Like so many other cultural tempests in teapots, this will blow over – with most of the population entirely unaware that the argument ever took place.

Yet if we think literature matters, then how we respond to it should matter, too (which is why it’s so strange to read a critic telling everyone to lighten up about criticism).

Of course, we don’t need a book culture based on attention-seeking hatchet jobs, any more than we need one centred on mutual flattery. We need critics who take books seriously enough to write what they think – and then to stand publicly by that assessment.

Many reviews don’t, of course, measure up to any of these standards – even those of the “professionals”. On a personal level, then, you need to develop a thick skin. You’re in the public eye, people can (and will, whether you like it or not) have opinions that they will express. What’s more, you do best not to take any of them too seriously: one of my most retweeted tweets a month or two ago went something like this: Overly positive reviews and unremittingly negative reviews are both bad for the soul. It’s best not to take either too seriously. I think that’s true.

Developing that thick skin is a little harder, of course, when you’ve been working for some years to have a book published. When you’ve made career and financial sacrifices to do it – when the success of the book is thus very personally important to you. George R.R. Martin need not worry so much about bad reviews, because his books are going to sell regardless (and that is part of the context you’re taking into account as a reviewer). A first-time novelist’s position, however, is much more precarious.

For these reasons, the bad reviews have been more difficult for me to read than the good ones. I always thought I wouldn’t worry much about reviews, but I hadn’t factored in the fact that I would get some unremittingly negative ones (or, for that matter, such positive ones). They always raise the nagging question in the back of the head, “What if the book is not a failure and I don’t get another contract?”

This is not, of course, a purely personal question. The precarious nature of the publishing industry has its effects here too. Writers are struggling along with the industry. The mid-list is being crushed.

At least one thing I remind myself of is that my book – and writing – is not the most important thing in the world. It may be important to me, but others face greater trials. To pick one example, in Australia (and off-shore), there are refugees in concentration camps. It’s useful to remember that we may be the centre of our own lives but that we are not the centre of the world. That notion helps you accept the reviews, good and bad, and to keep on keeping on.