{"id":478,"date":"2014-11-06T18:10:10","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T18:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=478"},"modified":"2020-01-18T08:31:11","modified_gmt":"2020-01-18T13:31:11","slug":"maybe-youre-right-and-the-reviewers-are-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/maybe-youre-right-and-the-reviewers-are-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Maybe You’re Right and the Reviewers are Wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As an author who’s done hundreds of readings and signings around the country (and abroad) I’m often asked about books on the best seller list and books in the news.\u00a0 I learned a long time ago to be very careful how I answered those questions.\u00a0 At the beginning of my career, a well-known author had warned me to watch what I said.\u00a0 He’d made an unfortunate remark about one of his peers when he<\/em> was starting out, and it had hurt him.<\/p>\n

So I often turn the question around and ask what my audience member thinks.\u00a0 Usually the response is: “I didn’t like it.” That’s why they asked the question in the first place.\u00a0 They wanted the opportunity to express it publicly, and with an author present; somehow that makes it all more official or permissible–or both.<\/p>\n

Everything is Illuminated<\/em> is one novel I remember many people at various venues saying they found frantic and phony one year when I was out on tour; The Lovely Bones<\/em> was another book people complained about a different time I was touring.\u00a0 I didn’t like either one for various reasons, but all I said in either case was that the writing didn’t draw me in. That’s the territory I stake out: technique.<\/p>\n

Disliking popular and acclaimed books has been on my mind lately, given the rapturous reviews for the movie of Gone Girl<\/em>, which have pretty much followed the whole reviewing world’s take on the book. Seriously, is there a newspaper in the country that isn\u2019t crazy in love with Gillian Flynn’s novel?<\/p>\n

Friends whose opinion I respect have urged me to read it, and I tried more than once.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 I never got very far.\u00a0 I found the writing off-putting.\u00a0 I tried her other books to be fair, and they didn’t work for me either stylistically.<\/p>\n

But this isn’t the first time a universally acclaimed book hasn’t passed my smell test.\u00a0 I reviewed for the Detroit Free Press<\/em> and other outlets for over a decade and I often found myself at odds with the reviewing consensus.<\/p>\n

So If it helps any of you out there who didn\u2019t like Gone Girl, or found it boring, you\u2019re not alone.\u00a0 Take a closer look at the Gone Girl<\/em> Amazon page.\u00a0 The last time I checked, for the 14,000+ readers there who gave it four or five stars, 7,000 gave it only one, two, or three.\u00a0 You\u2019re not alone, and it’s okay.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lev Raphael is the author of Assault With a Deadly Lie<\/em> <\/a>and 24 other books in genres from memoir to Jane Austen mash-up.\u00a0 You can read about them here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As an author who’s done hundreds of readings and signings around the country (and abroad) I’m often asked about books on the best seller list and books in the news.\u00a0 I learned a long time ago to be very careful how I answered those questions.\u00a0 At the beginning of my career, a well-known author had … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,101,24,3,105,18],"tags":[512,108],"class_list":["post-478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime-novels","category-gillian-flynn","category-publicity","category-publishing","category-reviews","category-thrillers","tag-amazon","tag-movie-reviewers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5437,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions\/5437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}