Howdy! Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the art of a great negative review. Like a review that goes really, really viral, sometimes with the potential to impact how people view the author, book, or reviewer. Think Andrea Long Chu’s reviews of Lapvona by Otessa Moshfegh and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Or even reviews on a smaller scale that seem to influence the public perception of a work in a specific community, such as the (in)famous reviews of R. F. Kuang’s Babel and Yellowface by Goodreads user idiomatic. And of course, more recently, Ann Manov’s takedown of Lauren Oyler in Bookforum.
Do you know of any other examples of famous or particularly influential book reviews? There’s a few I’m leaving out for brevity’s sake, but I’m generally just enjoying diving into this topic – wondering how much these actually affect authors and their books, and how much they drive a heightened profile of the very books they’re dragging through the mud
Thanks!
by Most_Concept
1 Comment
Deep dives into roasting a bad book are often a response to it’s overwhelming popularity or existing mass market appeal. I don’t think they affect the authors or sales very much. Not exactly sure what you mean by high-profile in this context. Random goodreads users or a forum post count as high-profile? There are tons of well structured bad reviews but I’m not sure what makes one more high-profile than the other.