Kissing Frogs

The secret life of a book reviewer

Is it just me, or is this not an eminently kissable frog?

Well, to be perfectly honest, it’s not really all that secret - it’s actually more a question of being carefully discreet. Perhaps I have been watching too much Wolf Hall,¹ and am overly drawn to an image of myself as working away quietly in the shadows, ideally, given the weather at the moment in the UK, swathed in furs (artificial, of course) and heavily woven worsted.

Book reviewing is a delicate but fundamentally highly indulged occupation. At the very least you get free books out of it, at the best you get paid for reading and discussing books you enjoy. The enjoyment, of course, is where the care and discretion come in. You can’t always enjoy all the books you’re sent, and the question is what you do about that. I now have an unbreakable rule that I do not review books I don’t like, but t’was not ever thus.

I started reviewing books rather by chance when I was still working on my thesis. I was researching French and English poetry on the Western Front during the First World War, and a conversation with an acquaintance of the literary editor of one the main UK broadsheets² led to said literary editor rather impetuously asking me whether I’d be interested in reviewing books on First Word War poetry for them. Needless to say, the answer was a tremulous ‘yes’. It was, as might be guessed, nerve-racking and tremendous fun.

Nerve-racking because of a number of factors, some logistical, others personal. The logistics were, as I’ve touched on elsewhere, absurd-seeming in today’s world of almost instantaneous communication. The normal schedule was that I would receive three or four books to review as a batch, with a very specific word count for the review - the lowest usually around 200 words, and the highest perhaps 1,500 - with the review to be delivered within a week, with two or three further days tacked on for receiving printed galleys to proofread, correct and return to the paper for setting and publishing. 

You had to be able to read and write fast and accurately, and were very much at the mercy of the post, with occasional emergency phone calls to get copy through on time if the post quite literally failed to deliver. So yes, in the early days, the logistics were always a source of racked nerves. 

The other contributor to stress for a book reviewer is, though, more personal and psychological. As we know from the massive investment which Amazon, GoodReads, TrustPilot and so many others put into gathering reviews, we all find other people’s experiences and points of view extremely valuable when looking to make a purchase or undertake an action. ‘Social proof’, the marketers call it, and it’s all around us these days.³ I found, when I first started publishing book reviews, that I was under two competing kinds of pressure - I wanted, where possible, to be positive about the books which individuals had spent their time and trouble writing, but I also wanted to be honest, and, where appropriate, to add to the conversation to which that book was making a contribution. That, I felt, was my job.

As a quick aside, I don’t feel any of these kinds of pressure when reviewing a purchase online. If a jug I have bought doesn’t pour properly and spills milk all over the table, I am happy simply to say it’s rubbish and not fit for purpose, and I have no inclination to suggest ways in which the manufacturer might improve their design - that’s their job, and I am happy to leave them to it. 

With books it’s different - for one thing, you know the names of the author or authors - on occasions, you may even know them personally - and you also know the determination and doggedness and drive it takes to get a book written and published. Finally, you also know how naked and vulnerable you feel as an author once your book has been published. Negative reviews in any sphere are hard to take, but in the arts, and I would here include cooking as an art, they are always felt personally. 

Hence, over time, the development of my personal rule as far as book reviewing is concerned - if I can’t say something nice, I don’t say anything at all. I won’t publish reviews of books I don’t like. My aim when reviewing books is rather to share with others the pleasure I gained from reading that particular title, the ways in which I admired and enjoyed it, and why I would recommend it to other readers with similar tastes.

Over the next few weeks I will be publishing a number of reviews of recently published or forthcoming books which I can wholeheartedly recommend and which I look forward to sharing with you. Some of them might initially look like frogs to you, but honestly - they’re all (non-binary) royalty.

1. The wonderful television adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novel is now showing on the BBC in the UK, with the absolutely awesome Mark Rylance as Cromwell, but is available more or less worldwide through various other platforms: Wolf Hall is available to watch outside of the UK on a number of platforms, including:

• Amazon Prime: Amazon Prime has exclusive rights to stream Wolf Hall. 

• Apple TV: Wolf Hall is available on Apple TV in Canada and Australia. 

• PBS: Wolf Hall is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS app. 

• Sky Store: You can download Wolf Hall from Sky Store and watch it outside of the UK, Republic of Ireland, and Channel Islands. 

• You can also use a VPN to watch Wolf Hall from abroad if it's geo-blocked.

2. This was a time when there were literary editors, and, indeed, broadsheets - and when they had book reviews in them…

3. Interestingly, and perhaps a subject for some hapless sociology student one day, is the way in which arts reviews have shrivelled and nearly died in newspapers commensurately with the way in which the opportunities for individuals to offer their views and their scatterings of stars online have proliferated. And, of course, getting Joe and Joanna Public to record their views is a good deal cheaper than paying a professional reviewer - no sour grapes there, gov, honest.