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When Reviews of Classic Novels Completely Missed the Mark
These critics look pretty silly in hindsight
January is finally over, and good riddance to it. I don’t know about you, but it’s been a total whipping for me in just about every area of life and the writing part has been no exception. Thankfully, we’re now into a new month, and to celebrate I want to give some encouragement to my fellow writers out there (and hopefully at least entertain all the non-writers). And there’s nothing more fun for a writer than the reviews of the work they poured their heart and soul into, right?
Not so much. If there’s one thing writers dread after publishing a novel, short story, or poem it’s receiving the inevitable harsh review. I say inevitable because a negative review is as sure as the sunrise. Even if you write the greatest book in the history of literature, some readers will hate it; at least one of those people will feel the need to put that hatred into a review.
Sometimes it’s not so bad. My favorite review of my novel The Last Word is actually a negative one. An Amazon reviewer called it “The Seinfeld of books; a novel about nothing.” It stung a bit the first time I read it, but after a while I realized that damn few books get compared to one of the funniest TV shows of the past 20 years, even in a backhanded way. And it was far…
