Sunday, June 21, 2009

New Opposite Of Cabbage Reviews

I am very pleased about Barbara Smith’s review of The Opposite of Cabbage. It really is very nice of her to do that. Thanks!

The book has also been reviewed by Ben Wilkinson in Magma, issue 44 along with two other collections by Mark Doty and John Agard. Andrew Philip’s The Ambulance Box is reviewed in the same issue, by Rosie Shepperd. I haven’t seen the issue (or the reviews) yet, but it should arrive in the next week or so. The launch for it is tomorrow in London at the Troubadour Cafè.

I’ve just read an article on Fiona Robyn’s blog on the subject of good and bad reviews. She is quite right. If a reviewer says your book is the best book ever written (as one reviewer did say of Joanne Harris’s Chocolat, for example) or that it is the biggest load of crap he/she has ever read, or indeed anything in between, the author isn’t obliged to believe any of them.

Good reviews are very useful, especially for new authors, because they get your book into people’s line of vision. Blog reviews, in particular, seem even to help sell copies! That’s not to be sniffed at, especially in the world of poetry where books don’t usually sell in huge numbers. But the quote Fiona gives at the end of her post from Dereke Bruce seems like a healthy attitude to me.

2 comments:

Sheila said...

I just read Barbara's review and was encouraged to look up your work, which is generously represented online. Thanks for that. I liked what I read very much, and not just because it reeked of Edinburgh. I'll add my order to the save Salt campaign, and have clicked on your subscribe to feed button. Congratulations on the book.

Rob said...

Thanks very much, Marie. I hope you enjoy the book. I just noticed you contribute to a group blog along with Andrew Shields and others. I looked at that before, a while back, and thought it seemed pretty good.