ELIZABETH FREMANTLE
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 A Hair in the Peanut Butter – some thoughts on neurotic novelists and the one star review

5/2/2013

3 Comments

 
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I had my first one star review on Amazon yesterday. It's a rite of passage for every author and part of me wanted to wear it like a badge of honour. I was going to Tweet: MY FIRST ONE STAR REVIEW – NOW I'M A PROPER AUTHOR. But the other part of me was full of self-loathing , flagellating myself for not being good enough and insisting to myself that the 35 readers who have given QUEEN'S GAMBIT five-stars must be wrong. Matt Haig in his latest Book Trust blog, the thin-skinned writer, describes it as the hair in the peanut butter that makes you want to throw out the whole jar. So what is it that makes us novelists so sensitive?

Perhaps we simply spend too much time alone in an imaginary world, populated by characters of our own invention and that leads to a skewed perspective. Haig puts it down to the author needing to feel things intensely in order to convey an emotional truth through writing, which is probably true too. Writing fiction can be like undressing in public. It's personal and intimate – that's what makes readers engage, so when someone doesn't like your book it feels like a rejection of yourself rather than the work. It may be a generalisation but novelists as a breed are probably more introverted by nature (it's the temperament that makes it easier to be alone long enough to write whole novels) and consequently more thin-skinned than many. But I don't think it is just the writer who is sensitive to damning criticism, I think it's everybody. It's just that in the real world people who hardly know you don't tell you what they really think. If they did society would go completely awry. 

Reviews however, are an important platform for the truth and by publishing something we are inviting opinion, indeed opinion is an essential part of the process. Readers need to know what other people honestly think before they buy, and book buyers aren't blind to the fact that such opinions are subjective – to buy a novel and not enjoy it is not the same thing as a buying a faulty toaster. I find it helps to look at the reviews of really successful authors – yes, they get single stars too – and remind myself that no one is everyone's cup of tea.
3 Comments
Margaret Powling
5/3/2013 12:30:06 am

After seeing your lovely study on Novelicious, I've now hopped over to your website/blog and I really must now go to Amazon and buy Queen's Gambit as I know next to nothing about Katharine Parr (she survived, and what is more, survived Henry, but what after that? Perhaps you can tell me in this novel ...)

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chris hill link
5/3/2013 09:24:48 pm

I've not had a one star yet but I've had lots of fours rather than five stars. At first this made me a bit grumpy but then I thought - 'get over yourself, if yours is a five star book then what's Proust?' I don't know how I'd react to a one star review though - probably throw my toys out of the pram! I'm sure I will find out when I get one sooner or later because let's face it - you can't please all the people all the time.

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Leanda de Lisle link
10/2/2013 08:06:09 am

Def not just novelists who are thin skinned! and irritable. My latest non fiction book's first reviews on Amazon. com and co.uk, were by people who boasted they hadn't read the book read...didn't stop them giving me miserable star ratings! Bring out the wax figurines and the hot needles I say

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  • Home
  • Books
    • SINNERS
    • Disobedient
    • The Honey and the Sting
    • The Poison Bed
    • The Girl in the Glass Tower
    • Watch the Lady
    • Sisters of Treason
    • Firebrand/Queen's Gambit
  • Author
  • Contact
  • US Readers