When Bad Reviews Happen to Good Writers

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An essay I wrote this morning, in reaction to a book review in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review.

If you’ve never read Alix Ohlin, you should.  She’s one of the good ones out there, and she’s no slouch when it comes to publishing.  Two story collections and two novels in seven years – perhaps not an impressive haul for bionic typewriters like Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates, but plenty impressive to me.  She may not have won a Pulitzer or a National Book Award yet, but Ohlin is someone I look up to, because she’s just a very solid writer.

So I was surprised when I read a review of her new novel (Inside) and collection (Signs and Wonders) on Friday in The New York Times Book Review (in print today).  Surprised because the review was scathingly negative.

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Everything Asian on New York Radio Korea

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Last week, the good folks at New York Radio Korea/KRB (1660AM on the dial in the Tri-State area) were kind enough to mention my book on their show.  Many thanks to TaeHun Kim, a fellow novelist who serves as a literary critic for KRB, for choosing to highlight my book.  The show is in Korean (though with English words and phrases thrown in sporadically!), so this is for Korean-speaking readers.  In addition to my novel, soccer and happiness are also discussed!

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Signs and Wonders, by Alix Ohlin

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Check out the reviewlet I wrote for the always wonderful and insightful Fiction Writers Review.

This might not seem like a compliment, but it is: Alix Ohlin is a literary torturer.

In her new collection, Signs and Wonders (Vintage), Ohlin (The Missing Person,Babylon and Other Stories) puts her poor people through the wringer, then takes a wrung-out person and puts him under a flattened-human-sized slide for an intense, revelatory microscopic examination. Then she peels off this pancaked person and twists him like toffee, extracting every last drop of his essence onto the page.

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