Review Online

My review of Lorri Neilsen Glenn's Combustion is now online at Quill & Quire. Shortly after I wrote and submitted this review (but before it was published), I received, out of the blue, a very nice email from the book's author. This is one of the downsides of book reviewing: many of the books one doesn't like are written by people that one might very well like. I find it unfortunate that, in some cases, a negative review has made someone dislike me personally, but it's nearly inevitable, it would seem. A few people whose books I've been hard on, to one degree or another, I've become friendly with after the fact, and I treasure those associations. I wish everyone was so adult about it. At any rate, a review is not a discussion between reviewer and author, but reviewer and reader--even if it's not always easy to keep the strands separate.