Reviews
Books live or
die at their hand. They drive writers to despair. Or fly
them over the moon.
One thing is certain: there is little virtue in taking them
to heart. Those that praise will inflate the ego, those
that damn will undermine your confidence. Hemingway had
various opinions about reviews. Here is one of my
favourites:
"
... reading the [reviews] ... is just a vice. It is very
destructive to publish a book and then read the reviews.
When they do not understand it you get angry; if they do
understand it you only read what you already know and it is
no good for you. It is not as bad as drinking Strega but it
is a little like it." —Hemingway,
from a letter to Bernard Berenson, 1952
With that
warning in hand, here are some of the reviews of
The Good
Lie:
"Bailey's
masterstroke is in creating a situation for his protagonist
that is so believable the reader cannot help but feel
complicit in the guilt and anguish of it all. With
compelling, measured prose, he stakes out precious
territory in a genre—located somewhere between thiller and
psychodrama—that he makes completely his own."
—Emily
Donaldson, read the full
review here: Quill &
Quire
"Bailey
knows how to employ atmosphere, characters and mood to
steadily build a story. And the story he so carefully
constructs is a good one." —Douglas J.
Johnston, read the full review here: Whats on
Winnipeg
