Unputdownable

Good morning one and all. This is Charlie Williams, your guest blogger. To those wondering where blogmeister Sarah is – DON’T PANIC. She’s safe and well, locked up in the cellar of an isolated rural house somewhere in Wisconson. We’ll let her out on Saturday morning.

The Daily Telegraph turns the lamp on a phenomenon that Sarah will have to look out for, now she’s a big-time book critic:

Reviewese.

Which is the tendency for certain cliches to pervade just about every review you write, if you’re not careful. The article picks out the words “coruscating” and “unputdownable” as key signs that the reviewer is infected. Ultimately the finger is pointed at publishers themselves, who cheekily write jacket blurbs that will influence what the innocent and malleable reviewer will write.

I mean, how dare the publisher write a blurb that could influence a reviewer?

Actually I’ve seen this taken to the extreme with Deadfolk. One reviewer took the entire press release and just turned a couple of words around. The guy actually put his name under that. I couldn’t possibly name the publication, because it was a positive review. (If reviewer rips off book blurb and review turns out negative, your blurb writer needs to look closely at what he’s doing.)

Another – and more damaging – manifestation of Reviewese is the “X meets Y” thing. Surprise surprise, I’ve had experience of this too. The publisher described Deadfolk as “Jim Thompson meets Guy Ritchie”. Now, I can see why they did that. It makes you think of something like “The Killer Inside Me”, and then put your own “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” spin on it. Cliche or not, it puts an image in your head. But it also gives a reviewer the opportunity to explain at great length why comparisons with Jim Thompson are churlish, or whatever. All you need is a literary sacred cow (Thompson) and a reviewer who happens to be a disciple (IMHO, everyone should be).

It would be easy for me to say the reviewer should review the book and not the blurb, but I guess he or she can only work with what’s before them. A novel consists of a bunch of words written by the author (edited by the editor). A book consists of that plus whatever the publisher wants to throw on the cover. The whole package is what gets reviewed.