Says Who?

The same publication that decided to rent out review space to self-published authors has slammed Quinn Dalton's Bulletproof Girl. Given my own enthusiastic reception of this book, I'd like to have a few words with the Kirkus reviewer who thought Dalton's work was "pat" and full of "overly familiar domestic issues."

Too bad he/she's anonymous.

Dalton does the next best thing, crafting an thoughtful, researched examination of the ethics of anonymous reviews.

While I agree that anonymity can foster greater honesty in reviews, I believe it also combines a false image of objectivity with the freedom to go beyond honesty into gratuitous harshness. Former Kirkus reviewer Jonathan Taylor recalled how he occasionally enjoyed writing scathing reviews, and that, furthermore, "I was even happy that it was anonymous, that my opinion and my voice were cloaked in whatever institutional authority Kirkus had."

Comments

[David Milofsky]

I'm also a former Kirkus reviewer and while, unlike Taylor, I never enjoyed writing bad reviews, Kirkus was always known among authors in the past as the "killer" among review services because of the unstinting honesty of the reviewers. I haven't read Dalton's book so have no opinion about it, but the problem with Kirkus now is not so much anonymity as consistency. If one part of the service is for rent and the other is not, how seriously can interested readers take the reviews? Not very, in my opinion.