Unlike Alice Hoffman’s new novel (see blog post from June 29th), The Devil’s Company (on sale July 7th! That’s tomorrow!) received very favorable treatment from my hometown newspaper, The San Antonio Express News. Reviewer David Hendricks says “The Devil’s Company,” like [A Conspiracy of Paper] and [The Whiskey Rebels] is more than just a finely written mystery. Liss injects thoughtful discussion of issues that should resonate in the best university business courses. Corporate ethics at the British East India Company appear to resemble those of Wall Street companies this decade…. Liss accomplishes this within an engaging, intelligent and entertaining narrative that also illuminates London’s 18th-century lifestyles and urban landscapes. The dialogue is sharply turned, and the humor is deliciously subtle.” For more about how swell the new book is, read the entire review here. As a bonus, Hendricks manages to make it through an entire article without talking about how much he hates The Ethical Assassin. I’m pleased to see he is moving on.  For his sake.

But this was not the only one I received this weekend. Ever since Vikings founded the city of Houston in the late 8th century, no institution has expressed its opinions and culture as consistently as Examiner.com. It was there that Faith Acker, on our nation’s birthday, chose to post a review of my first novel, a mere nine and half years after its publication.  She calls her work, “Liss’ A Conspiracy of Paper: A Conspiracy of Pompus Drivel.  Perhaps not the best thing to read to learn the correct spelling of the word pompous, it is a pretty good essay if you want to know how much this woman hates my first book.

Hjalnek, founder of Houston

Since it has been a busy time for writers striking back at their reviewers (see blog posts from June 29th and July 2nd), I thought I might say a few words about Ms. Acker’s analysis of my work. In may ways, I sympathize with Alice Hoffman and Alain de Botton in their rage against what they perceive as unfair reviews. I, myself, have received what I thought of as unfair reviews, and they are pretty annoying. But Ms. Acker’s piece is not the sort of review you get in a newspaper or magazine which actually attempts to provide some kind of thoughtful analysis (perhaps incorrectly) of where a book has gone wrong. Certainly, I respect the right of people to not like a book by me – or anyone else. Taste is a mysterious thing, and novels are rarely good or bad in any empirical sense.

What bothers me about this review is that it is more like the kind of unhinged email I get once in a while from readers who are clearly furious with me for having written a book they did not like. Some readers take the existence of a book they don’t enjoy as a personal insult.  That appears to be the case here.  Of Benjamin Weaver, the novel’s protagonist, whom many readers actually like, Acker writes, “Liss has created a loathsome and wordy imbecile to write this interminable first-person narrative…. Overall, the book’s narrator writes in the tone of a bad bully who can’t understand why his attempts at humour [sic – though only in America] are overlooked by his victims, and it is, indeed, the reader rather than Weaver’s opponents who most suffer at the hands of this poor excuse for a protagonist.”

Faith Acker, from her profile

Ouchie. She has hurt my feelings. Acker provides no email address, but you can leave comments after the post. I am not suggesting anything. I’m just, you know, saying.

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