On the shelf

Oh no, not my book

Are writers entitled to anger upon reading a stringent book review? At a time when the literary establishment the world over is accused of becoming increasingly incestuous, it8217;s interesting that there is growing sympathy for an author who received a bad review. The event that8217;s started the debate: a review in the Times Literary Supplement by Russia specialist Rachel Polonsky of Orlando Figes8217;s otherwise well hailed Natasha8217;s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. Reading the review, you8217;d think the book8217;s author had almost committed a crime against humanity by bringing his work into the public domain, but Figes sympathisers 8212; among them, most of England8217;s literary columnists 8212; say the review smacks of viciousness. Figes certainly thinks so. After a rejoinder in TLS, he is said to be considering legal action.

Robert McCrum, literary editor of The Observer, however, has words of comfort for Professor Figes. At least the notice he received was more polite than this one posted by Macaulay of a three-volume memoir: 8220;We cannot sum up the merits of this stupendous mass of paper which lies before us better than by saying that it consists of about two thousand closely printed pages, that it occupies fifteen hundred inches cubic measure, and that it weighs sixty pounds avoirdupois.8221;

Now, A Reality Novel

And we are not being vicious, we promise, when we marvel at how circumstances have made a bestseller of as forgettable a novel as Michel Houellebecq8217;s Platform. First, the French writer who resides in Ireland won himself a fatwa for anti-Islam statements 8212; rallying, in that process, Salman Rushdie himself, who pleaded in his latest column a writer8217;s right to state his views, no matter how much they may enrage some folks. And now, the Bali blasts have given a prophetic twist to his book, with its meditations on the clash between the tourist industry in Southeast Asia and radical Islam.

Houellebecq, incidentally, created an even bigger stir with the publication of his previous novel Atomised, which many in France hailed as the best thing since Sartre and Camus, and which across the channel critics like Julian Barnes heartily welcomed.

Scandal doesn8217;t always pay

But then there is no guaranteed connection between being in the news and notching up sales. As Edwina Currie has found. The woman once called the 8220;next Margaret Thatcher8221; provoked something of a political scandal by writing in Diaries 1987-92 that she8217;d had a four-year affair with her boss, former British prime minister John Major. It may have hauled out Major from his semi-retired, cricket-watching existence to make a red-faced apology, and it certainly made her a regular on the front pages of Britain8217;s newspapers, but it does not seem to have inspired readers to pay for a copy of the book. One estimate has it ranked 293rd in terms of sales, though at Amazon.co.uk its rank is even more pathetic: 1.075!