A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Literature delivers tidings of the world within and the world without.
The fact is that in this day and age I don't think any novelist can assume that a book will get attention.
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
I want all my books to provoke some kind of response in the reader, to make them think something or feel something or both, and for that to become a part of them and work into their own lives.
When you write a novel, you never have to be in the service of the reader. My only concern with my books is that the world that's created be as logical and whole as possible.
This is what I have discovered - and it has been a gift in itself - that books live over and over again in different people's minds. That I might mean one thing as I write, but a reader's experiences will take it somewhere else. That is like a conversation, I think. It is a true connecting up.
Ultimately, in my mind, that's what I'm trying to do with my fiction; I'm trying to transport my reader into a different world.
Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.
A book is always a dialogue with other readers and other books.
Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.