I’ve mentioned many times that I review books for two
newspapers. With so much responsibility comes a big headache. It’s not possible
for me to like every book I read and review and my editor has specifically
asked me to be very honest in my reviews and point out the flaws in the books.
Just two days back I finished reviewing a book for the
newspaper, to be honest my review wasn’t a favourable one. Actually while
reading the first few pages I realized that I didn’t like the way the writer
had treated the historical character. Infact, she had made him look like a
buffoon. I was absolutely shocked that the book had been published by a big
publisher. I mean it made a mockery of an entire section of history, so as to
come across as cool and funny, and it had such a flippant tone that I was
tearing out my hair in frustration.
Sometimes I wonder how do the commissioning editors
overlook all this. I mean when they have so much power vested in them,
shouldn’t they be extra careful about the kind of books they publish? Shouldn’t
they be concerned with the kind of writing that comes out of their publishing
house. Here I’m not saying that the book was badly written with poor grammar
and sentence structure. Far from it. I admit that the author had done a lot of
research and familiarized us with things we had no knowledge of, but she could
have done so without lampooning so many things in history.
Though my review has not belittled the author or her
writing skills, I’ve mentioned what I didn’t like about the book (there were
many things) and I have clearly mentioned all of them. I feel when the review
is published in a few days, I will be ruffling quite a few feathers. But there
was no way I could lie and give the book a good rating or praise it when it
didn’t deserve it.
Do you think I did the right thing? Should I have
overlooked what I didn’t like and not mentioned it in my review? What would you
have done in my place?
