On fiction reviewing [Essay]

The pleasures (and pains) of being a fiction reviewer

PW in the famous armchair at Literary Review, 2006.

Twenty years ago, I stood, hovering (and havering), at a crossroads.

I had spent a few days sitting in a barrister’s chambers, sifting through vast piles of legal documents, whilst the barrister himself (a very affable fellow) occasionally sang out, in deep, rich tones, “tiddley pom.”

I loved the Inns of Court, and the sight of the barristers carrying their wigs on their way to court; I loved the intricacies of case law and the finely written judgements handed down by classically-trained judges; but even within the legal profession I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, as I also had a training contract (to be a solicitor) with a terrifying American law firm.

That September, I’d spent a fortnight sending letters to every journal or magazine I could think of, from the local to the national, begging for work experience. A handful replied in the affirmative, and one of those was Literary Review.

After I’d been there for a few weeks, sitting in the comfortable armchair in their office (which might swallow you if you weren’t careful), and avoiding the hole in the floor, they asked me to their Christmas lunch.

It happened to be on the same day as the drinks that my law firm were giving for new trainees. The lunch took place in the Academy Club (a charming, rackety room up a flight of rickety stairs behind a discreet door in Soho). Instantly, I felt at home. There was the biographer Jeremy Lewis, beaming, bespectacled and telling fruity anecdotes emphasised by his enormous, meaty hands; there was Robert Posner, the eccentric and often hilarious business manager, who had, in his youth, walked around London barefoot with a bell around his neck; and there was, in general, an amiable fug of wine, jokes, and, of course, books, and - more importantly - gossip about books and authors. The contrast with the shiny, well-dressed young solicitors I met later couldn’t have been more pronounced. Reader: I was hooked.

So began a life of book reviewing. (I’ve written elsewhere about the economics of it all.) I don’t think I could possibly count how many book reviews I’ve written over the years, though I’ve kept every single one (which run to about 20 large box files. This physical archive is very important, as reviews posted online, even in major outlets, can mysteriously vanish, so I will also print out reviews that only appear online).

I’ve handled almost everything, from tiny picture books to 1,000 page histories of the Middle Ages; but my specialisms (such as they are) are fiction, children’s books, Classics, Shakespeare and literary biography. (One of the things about book reviewing is whether to get someone who knows what they’re talking about to review a book: an expert might pick up on errors, but would he or she be able to read it as General Reader would?)

Mathew Lyons has written about being a non-fiction reviewer, and so I thought I would do the same for fiction. Like Mathew, I review for a wide range of papers and journals: Literary Review, for whom I compose a regular, tri-annual children’s book round up; The Spectator, Spectator World, The Times Literary Supplement, The Telegraph, The Financial Times, The Times, The Guardian, and many other entities, from the megalithic to the microscopic, which are, like Legion, too many to list here.

Here’s how it works.

1. Research: acquiring information

I prefer to work from good old-fashioned physical catalogues (publishers like Faber still sometimes send them out. Hooray for Faber!). I find online catalogues mystifying and often lose track of what I’ve seen, whereas with a physical catalogue I can tab the interesting books. Publishers, take note.

I look a few months ahead, as there’s no point pitching something that’s appearing in a year’s time (although you can show your enthusiasm for something, but editors don’t always like that). I’ll also have my personal preferences - authors I enjoy, or that I think should have more prominence (like Benjamin Wood, whose Seascraper I reviewed last week.)

Publishers send me books (which pile up into ziggurats in my study) and I’ll frequently find something I wouldn’t have otherwise considered because of this; however, I don’t get sent everything, and equally, I sometimes (frustratingly) miss important or excellent books. However, you can’t be on to everything all the time, as that would in itself be a full time job, and it would get in the way of other projects.

Social media is a useful way of scrying, so I’ll often put out a message on Twitter for new children’s books, and I’ll keep a weather eye out on the publishers’ and authors’ sites as well.

2. Pitching

This is the hardest part of the job. It’s important to develop a good, professional relationship with your editors (I’ll come to that later). Some editors have even become friends; but even then, professionalism is at the fore. I would never review something simply because I knew the author, for example; and I would never review something bad as if it were not.

Publications often ask me to review something, which can be fun, but can also be not very fun at all), but about seventy per cent of the time, a review happens because I’ve pitched it. Whether you get a response or not depends on many factors out of your control: they might have someone else in mind; they might not want to cover the book; they might have been particularly busy that day.

Sometimes I’ll pitch a book and get a response within an hour; other times, it can be a week or more. (This week, I pitched a book to about seven editors, only to find that every one of them had already assigned it to someone else. When this happens, I’ll usually mark it down as an interesting book to write a blog about, particularly if I have a perspective on it that others might not.) Editors are always looking ahead: the monthlies and the weeklies look further ahead than the newspapers, and it’s important to get the timing correct. I like to think of jet fighter pilots being very similar in their attention to timing.

Mathew Lyons mentioned that reviewers sometimes have to read things overnight, and wondered how that happened: I can report that yes, I have done that with heavily embargoed books, and I simply sat up all night with coffee (and whisky).

Sometimes it’s easy, as when I reviewed the sequel to Winnie the Pooh by David Benedictus, a lovely little book that took about an hour to read. More recently, my weekend was consumed by Suzanne Collins’ Sunrise on the Reaping, which I had to read on a PDF (not pleasant).

I recall having to read J G Farrells’ Troubles overnight because it had won a prize: it’s such a brilliant book that I didn’t mind. Doing this sort of thing can be exciting, particularly with a big name book, as you will be one of the first people in the world to experience it. This is about as glamorous as book reviewing gets, especially if the publisher has to send the manuscript round on a bike. Thrilling! Who needs jet fighters, I ask you.

So, your pitch has been successful. Now what? You have to get hold of the book. When the editor posts you the book his or herself, that’s fine (Craig Brown, who was Literary Editor of the Daily Mail, used to say it was like being a glorified postman.) These days, with editors working from home, you are quite often required to “call in” the book yourself. This can feel like undergoing a quest without a map. You have to find the imprint, then the publicist, and then publicists - overworked - are not at the end of phonelines, as they used to be, and sometimes it can take several emails and phonecalls before you get through. (There is a new trend for sending PDFs rather than proofs - I hate reading things on screen. Proofs are much better.) If all is well, a proof or an early copy of the book will burst through your letter box. Happy days.

3. More research

If, for example, I’m reviewing a novelist I’ve not read before, like Nick Harkaway, I’ll try to read the previous works. This, of course, isn’t always possible, particularly if it’s a novelist with a long track record (please don’t ask me to review Joyce Carol Oates), but I will always read around the subject.

Biographical details, interviews, critical responses, academic journals, all are grist to the reviewer’s exacting mill. I don’t find (as some do) that this colours my response to the book in question: it simply helps to establish a paradigm. During this stage, I might pick the book up and open it randomly a few times to get a sense of the style and characters: it’s surprising how useful this can be. As a writer myself, I’ve never minded reading other works whilst I’m writing: I seem to be able to use different “spaces” in my mind for my own fiction.

4. Reading!

Now I’ll read the book conventionally, all the way through, from beginning to end. I remember being horrified when a certain reviewer Who Shall Not Be Named boasted of an ability to write a review, having only read the press release.

I simply would never do that, and I will always read a book all the way to the end (even if it’s tiresome). The job of a reviewer isn’t simply to provide lively or interesting copy; it’s to engage thoughtfully with the fiction in a way that does justice to the author’s intention. Otherwise, you might as well get an AI to read the press release and churn out empty copy. No thanks.

I have notebooks - so many notebooks. A forest of notebooks. I have trouble finding the right pens. I abhor biros; fountain pen ink leaks through the pages; a fineliner tends to be all right, but they have a habit of vanishing into the ether. I am always looking for pens. It is my usual state of being. Sometimes I am reduced to using a child’s pen, with a fluffy pink ball on top of it, which will be the only one to hand.

As I read, I will note down quotes which strike me as being useful for thematic or quotable purposes. If it’s a proof, I’ll underline words and phrases, but in general I like to keep the books clean, particularly if I enjoy it and want to keep it for my shelves.

Usually, by about a third of the way through, I’ll have a sense of the line I’m going to be taking. Sometimes the thematic core of a book will be towards the end: a scene or a paragraph that encapsulates the whole. My notebooks can be quite complicated affairs, as I’ll often have to interrupt my reading with other things: it is not unusual to find a note for an appointment, or a shopping list, in between the gorgeous aperçus (hem hem) I’ve been writing down.

5. Composition

This is my favourite part. I love writing. (I always have done). Even now, I’ll still - sometimes - draft things by hand. I have a special notebook in which I record details of every book I’ve read since the early 21st century. This can be very useful as it helps me to look up authors I’ve reviewed before, and gives me a sense of my reading patterns. (If anyone would like to know how many books are in there, the number is currently around 1,500).

I’ll write down my initial responses in this notebook. Sometimes a line or a phrase will jump out at me; sometimes it won’t. I’ll then turn to the computer. I don’t really like computers - they appear mildly sinister to me, as if they are plotting something - but their efficiency trumps that, I suppose. (When I first started working at Literary Review, some reviewers still posted in their reviews by typescript.)

A review can take any number of forms, and word count is an important factor. Even if I have a short space, I’ll try to cover at least some of the following: major themes; patterns in relations between characters; resonances in plot to theme; literary style; politics and relation to theory or biographical information.

This seems like a lot, but it can be done, as with this children’s round up which refers to Jung and Froebel. I’ll usually draft something first, and then leave it, printing it out and carrying the pages around the house. The drafts are scribbled on (a lot) and can sometimes resemble hieroglyphics. I think reviews should, above all, be interesting to read, and so I try to maintain a lively yet informative style.

6. Filing

When I’m happy with a draft - and this happens right up until I paste it into the email to send to the editor, as I will scour it again several times before pressing send (and then immediately afterwards, when, with a wail and a gnash of the teeth, I’ll notice some infelicity that will bother me for days afterwards) - I will file it.

I pride myself on being on time - I don’t recall ever missing a deadline - and this is part of the professionalism, especially in terms of your relationship with your editor. If your editor asks for 400 words by next Tuesday, that’s what you do - you don’t write an 800 word think piece and file it in a month’s time. (It seems an obvious thing to say, but I have seen people fall by the wayside because of this very inability to meet the editors’ demands.)

Fiction, sadly, doesn’t get as much coverage as non-fiction in the papers: the lead review will usually be non-fiction. This can (sorry, non-fiction writers!) be frustrating, as it’s rare for a fiction reviewer to be given a lead piece, and sometimes fiction reviews can be squashed up right in the back of a journal, near an advert for trousers with elasticated waist bands.

And yet, fiction plays an important part in our literary ecosystem and, dare I say it, can often be more resonant in people’s lives than non-fiction.

7. Editing

Some editors have a light touch; others don’t. Some will send you the piece back covered in furious question marks - What does this mean?, they will ask, for example, which will force you to think about exactly what it is that you do mean.

Most weeklies and monthlies (but not the dailies) will send a proof back, sometimes in the form of the page layout. This is your last chance to pick up on any errors - shamefully, in the past I have let a couple through, but we are not all Argus of the hundred eyes. (I recall someone sending a sniffy letter in to the TLS because I’d spelled Prichard as Pritchard in a review of the new Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature - a massive volume which I’d spent two or three months reading every single entry at least once. My response, reader, was remarkably restrained.)

8. Waiting

You then have to wait until the piece comes out. When I was in my early twenties, I found this period very frustrating. How sad that the public would have to wait for my golden prose! (Hem hem). Especially so if it was more than a month; now, the time appears to me like a sparrow flying through the open window of a mead hall and then flying out of another, etc. etc.

9. Publication

Magazines will send you a copy of the journal in which your review appears; this is very satisfying. Newspapers won’t; this is not, and you have to make sure that you check the pages, and this can also result in frantic online messages to friends: “Is anyone in London and near a newsagent and can pick up a copy of The Bugle in which I have a review of a book about toothpicks” etc.

I always promote my reviews online - partly to publicise the book itself, especially if it’s a good one, but also because it helps to create an online archive.

Sometimes editors will see a review I’ve posted, and then ask me to do something, for example. It also makes it very easy for me to look up links on my blog, if I’m pitching something. I’ve also been asked for speaking engagements at schools and universities because a teacher or lecturer has seen a review (or piece) I’ve posted.

It’s wonderful when people engage with reviews - whether negatively or positively - as it’s all part of the great, complex and continuing literary conversation in which we are all partakers of one sort or another.

I’ve never reviewed for the money - as I’ve written about before, if you were to pay reviewers properly for the time and effort we put into our reviews, then newspapers probably wouldn’t bother.

I review for love: of the written word, of the literary ecosystem, of authors, and because I think fiction and children’s books in particular deserve more time and space in our media. Reading is important; reading fiction is, in my view, the most important of all. And reviewing it is a small, but vital stage in that process.

If anyone has any questions, I’d be happy to answer them.