janeganahl.com Blog

I got a really odd review in the LA Times yesterday. It wasn’t very good – but the reviewer (a man, which is an interesting choice) seemed more put out with how I chose to write my book than the book itself. I.e. with the blurred line between truth and fiction, which I fully explain in the acknowledgments. I didn’t disagree entirely with what he said – that my book had a powerful enough message without fictionalizing. But then again, the year in question was just a few back! Those men that I dated are still very much around – some still in my life in one way or another! One must be… judicious when describing events. But in case the critic reads this (which I doubt), he can be assured that every bad date happened pretty much exactly as I described it. Does that help?
Here’s the url in case you missed it.
http://www.calendarlive.com/books/reviews/cl-et-book31mar31,0,6736377.story?coll=cl-books-util
By the way, I’ve been lucky in that I’ve gotten uniformly great reviews so far, so I won’t quibble inordinately with this one. But when I read reviews like this, where the critic bites down hard on one element of a book and shakes the stuffing out of it, I always put myself in the position of the reader/potential book buyer. (Okay, okay – but is it entertaining? Well-written? Worth my $25?)
At the end of the day – hey! It was in the LA Times! So I can’t complain.
Happy April 1!
Jane