I work really hard at these books, and when colleagues write nasty reviews of them, I take it very personally.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.
Most books reviews aren't very well-written. They tend to be more about the reviewer than the book.
After each book, I get panicky. I don't love the reviews. I don't like going through all that, and you would think that, after almost 40 years of writing, I'd have got the hang of it.
Writing is exhilarating, but reading reviews is not. I've been really devastated by 'good' reviews because they misunderstand the project of the book. It can be strangely galvanising to get a 'bad' one.
The feedback I get is that my books are honest. I don't sugar-coat anything. Life is really hard.
My toughest criticism usually comes from myself. As my editor can attest to, I'm never done tweaking a book until the production department has to rip it from my hands!
The books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the New York Review of Books, and substantial.
I found out about reviews early on. They're mostly written by sad men on bad afternoons. That's probably why I'm less angry than some writers, who are so narcissistic they consider every line of every review, even a thoughtful one, as major treason.
Sometimes, I'll hear from other writers or folks in the publishing industry that my books are rule-breakers, which I take as a compliment.
I don't read reviews, There's no value for me in reading them. Whether they're good or bad, they'll just make me self-conscious.