When Is a Book Review Not a Book Review?

An Editorial by Nan Hawthorne

When is a book review not a book review? When it is, in essence, a free advertisement.

I just resigned from a book review blog because a review I wrote was deemed "negative" and therefore unpublished. I had not known the policy of the group precluded anything but the most minor criticism of a book. If I had been, I should not have chosen to accept the invitation to participate. As I said recently to a colleague, I believe that if a reviewer cannot say what she thinks of a book she has no business reviewing it at all. It's dishonest. It calls into question the credibility of every single review published within its digital covers. It cheats those who read and trust the reviews.

I am terribly disappointed. I felt honored to be part of that group. But I simply feel that if authors want nothing but a send-off of their work, they should make sure their books are perfect. And you know and I know that no book is perfect. It's a subjective art, reviewing.

In the case of the book I reviewed "negatively" -- I don't happen to agree with that assessment, actually -- it had several plot threads that simply fizzled out and were never resolved. The book had its merits, the historical research was superb and it was one of the best portrayals of female friendships I have ever read written by a man. But the book was slow to start, got better, then started jumping about confusingly. Then it just ended. I feel it would have been a disservice to cover all that up.

To clarify, the site's policy is basically "If you have to say too much negative about a book, don't review it at all." In other words, you as the reader don't know if a book that is not on the site was tooo awful to review or was just never reviewed.

I don't understand how reviews of books where flaws are unacknowledged is anything but free advertising for the book?

I plan to ask the publishers of the site either to remove all my reviews as well as their review of my own novel or add a disclaimer that only positive comments were permitted.

As an author I object to mollycoddling. If I put out my work I must be prepared to hear things I don't like. I understand the author of the book whose flaws I acknowledged wrote to the owner of the site to object. The owner only said to me that his email "broke my heart". What sense does it make to write reviews then? I was not harsh or bitchy or nasty.. and I shouldn't be defending myself here. He should be defending his book. I know how it feels to have less than complimentary assessments of my work published. That's just the price of being a public artist.

My one chuckle over this situation concerns the new law that calls into question the integrity of product review blogs. As of December 1st bloggers in the U.S. must reveal if they received the book or other product they are reviewing in return for the review. This law doesn't apply to any mediem other than the Internet. The impllication is that people who review on the Internet are not to be trusted to have integrity, that we are likely to write rave reviews in exchange for compensation. In the case of book reviews, this is a laughable assertion, given that it is a rare review where the reviewer bought the book herself. That happens to be the case with most of my reviews, since That's All She Read is as much a place for me to record all the books I read.

But it appears that it doesn't take compensation or reward to assure a positive published assessment of a book. Ill-placed and unprofessional "niceness" will do the job as well.