13 Common Mistakes in Book Reviewing and How to Avoid Them

It’s easy to see why writing criticism attracts so many authors, aspiring or established, and other students of literature: it offers the opportunity to highlight a love of books while showing off one’s own chops as a writer and thinker. Insightful commentary on the world’s literary life entered the public discourse 2,500 years ago, and it plays a vibrant, vital role in the health of the arts and society today. It’s an admirable, aspirational pursuit that attaches the reviewer to a tradition that trails all the way back to Aristotle.

I love language and admire anyone who takes a run at mastering the linguistic arts. It is a challenging, surprising, rewarding endeavor worthy of its conundrums. Literature may be endlessly elastic, but book criticism has best practices and parameters that are no less potent for being unwritten. It’s a form that can be learned, a skill that can be improved and refined. As a writer and editor for more than 20 years, I’ve noted some prevalent tics that blight otherwise fine critical writing even as they guarantee me a living doing something I love.

It should be noted that my familiarity with these blunders begins with my own early commitment to abusing them. My first real job was as editorial assistant for The Washington Post’s book reviews section, Book World. This was during the mid-to-late-90s, and I had the great benefit of listening in daily on the literary debates of a brilliant group of book nerds anchored by two critic-editors who had won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism—Jonathan Yardley (1981, while he was at The Washington Star) and Michael Dirda (1993), both authors themselves. These men and women assigned reviews to the biggest names in literature but were never afraid to suggest necessary changes to improve a piece. They were generous enough to let me try my hand at the craft and steered my early critical work accordingly.

These days, the Internet’s take-all-comers policy has fostered an epidemic of syntactical terrorism. There are too few editorial gatekeepers, and it appears that many smart MFA graduates are absorbing the theory but not the mechanics. It’s also the case that the sheer volume of copy the Internet allows makes it nearly impossible for most editors, even really good ones, to find the time to beat up copy properly and provide comprehensive feedback. This is a shame, because the publication’s reputation suffers when lower-quality writing makes the page, and potentially great critics end up collecting middling clips because their loose writing hasn’t had to absorb the years of sculpting the old system would have insisted upon.

We all wedged ourselves into the racket because we care about language and have swooned at lovely turns of phrase our whole lives. Which means we’re on the same page in wanting the writing—whoever’s it is—to sing. Of course, reading the work of the great critics, from Harold Bloom, Martin Amis, and John Updike to Michiko Kakutani, Doris Lessing, and Susan Sontag, would help immeasurably. But here I offer my own guidelines for steering clear of the most common flaws (we’ll save the rampant grammatical breaches for another essay).

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I. Grandiose claims

Beginning a review with a hyperbolic sentiment—I’ve seen openings like, “Author X is a writer who does nothing less than tear through the fabric of time to solve the great mysteries of life”—may sound good, but what does it actually mean? Additionally, it’s grandiose in such a way as to provoke the reader to think of a very short list of authors for whom you could possibly make that claim, a list that does not include Author X, who’s just published his second novel. So before the first sentence or paragraph is over, the reader is already suspicious of your judgment. Bring those extravagant claims down and make sure they are clear and defensible.

Another aspect of this is breadth of knowledge. If you’re going to declare something the best of the year or brilliant beyond imagining, you better have read every other novel released this year and have a record that proves you’re one of the most well-read critics on earth. Humility and restraint work to your advantage. The opposite makes you look foolish.

II. Lack of clarity

Many writers, myself included, are sometimes guilty of linguistic flights of fancy that are sonically and syllabically fabulous but in fact mean nothing whatsoever. To be charitable, the impulse is usually to entertain the reader with surprising, lovely use of language, and for that: bravo. To be less charitable, it’s a nonconsensual, ego-driven effort to force the reader to watch you masturbate your words all over the place. In which case, work on those boundaries!

A key red flag is when you feel some part of your brain refusing to take a hard look at that sentence or phrase for fear that you may have to change it.

These lingering word-tangles too often obscure meaning and trap the reader into scanning a sentence seven times just to discern the point you may be trying to make. To assess your luscious handiwork impartially after the initial inspiring flow requires a committed stance against balderdash and blarney. A key red flag is when you feel some part of your brain refusing to take a hard look at that sentence or phrase for fear that you may have to change it. In those cases, reverse-engineer it: rewrite your idea in straightforward third-grade prose and then dress it up a bit from there.

III. Repetitiveness and redundancy

This typically stems from your impulse to make sure the reader cannot possibly miss the incredibly insightful point you’re making. Unfortunately, what the repetition actually signals is your insecurity about the argument, thus undercutting the reader’s confidence in you. From a reader’s perspective, it’s also frustratingly like being forced to tread water in the middle of a nice, fluid swim.

A paragraph that circulates the same idea through several iterations has the stench of a college paper stretching to reach a minimum-page limit. On the plus side, most times you simply don’t realize that you said it perfectly well the first time. Cut the rest and use the valuable real estate for other things. The other possibility is that you’re not quite sure what your point is and have decided to throw a few random jabs rather than work hard to land one solid punch. It’s worth taking an eight count to give it another try.

IV. Casual narcissism

There’s a curious paradox at play with this one, and I see it all the time. Yes, you’re the one reviewing the book. Congratulations! But, for goodness sake, you don’t need to call attention to it.

Put plainly: get yourself out of the piece. For one thing, unless you’re Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Michael Chabon you don’t have a status in the lit world that merits a reader’s interest in your broader personal views. So your “I” statements are mostly self-aggrandizing and distracting. Keep the focus on the work at hand. I mean, you’re a writer, so imagine the situation reversed: You’ve spent a year, maybe three, sweating this novel, and a random MFA student spends half his 1,500-word review talking about my this and I that. It’s unseemly, misguided, and, I dare say, disrespectful.

Just because you can write a 3,200-word book review doesn’t mean you should.

Here’s the other thing: it’s completely unnecessary. Your name is on the piece, usually right at the top! So it follows that every statement is an opinion of yours. Trust me, more authority is communicated through a confident omnipotent voice than through narrow personal asides that the reader has no reason to consider. This is a book review, so remember: your mission is to be of service to readers first and the author second. It’s not a billboard for your personal blatherings, which is a sure sign of amateurism. If it reads as if it’s been written for a blog, then it belongs on a blog.

V. Over-explication of plot

This may be an effort to dodge a lack of confidence in your critical capacities, or it could be a misapprehension of the critic’s mission, but writing a review that is entirely plot description is like describing the precise dimensions of a pool to someone without ever allowing him to jump in the water. It’s both too much and too little at the same time. Your job is not to give a full plot summary of the book. It’s only to set the major plot strands in motion so the reader has enough information to know whether the book is a good fit for her tastes (and thus worth spending time and money on). Think of it like flirtation: you just want to go far enough for the reader to know whether she wants to take the book home.

The other thing to recognize is that these reviews are criticism. Which means that if you’ve spent the whole review on plot then you haven’t assessed the work’s themes, characters, narrative mysteries, dialogue, structure, language, originality, relevance to humanity at large, cultural context, quality as a piece of art, etc. And if that’s the case, why does the reader need you?

Here’s a good, broad rule of thumb: never describe concretely anything in the plot past the midway point in the book. On the other hand, I also see smart writers dive right into the critical deep end and never actually give a cogent description of the book’s plot. Don’t do this, either.

VI. Excessive length

This is a matter of taste, of course, and it’s eminently elastic, especially in the digital age, since you don’t have to write to those pesky page layouts and ad borders print publications have to contend with. But therein lies the problem. Just because you can write a 3,200-word book review doesn’t mean you should. You’ve got to earn that kind of attention, and it’s rare that a reviewer, or the material, merits it.

I’m old enough to have worked when the printed page design meant limits (limits!) on how long articles could run. I contend that this was not just a function of physical space. It was a reflection of value. And ideally the reader trusts both the publication and the writer to make those value judgments for them. It’s hard to see any reason that this should be different for the web.

Kind of like with debate prep, you want your piece to have answered preemptively any potential questions and challenges from a reader.

In fact, the opposite case could easily be made. Readers today have infinite options for reading material throughout the day. You’re asking too much when you present them with thousands of words on one book—unless it’s an A-list writer’s new release or a reassessment of a major classic made newly relevant. And anyway, limits more often than not challenge a writer to be sharper and minimize indulgence in the kinds of bad habits listed here. I think back to my Book World days, and if David Remnick and Margaret Atwood can get it done in 1,000 words then you probably can, too.

VII. Nonsensical arguments

This is not the same thing as lack of clarity, though they can overlap. One involves employing unnecessarily florid language and galloping sentence construction to obscure a perfectly good point, while the other was never a worthy point to begin with. A good way to catch yourself up on these is to have a second reader play devil’s advocate on your prose. Kind of like with debate prep, you want your piece to have answered preemptively any potential questions and challenges from a reader.

There’s a laziness to how many of us create what we think is a clever riff but neglect, or refuse, to vet its logic for fear that we’ll have to drop the killer simile or snarky aside. Our instincts are usually right: the line is a stinker. It takes humility to give your opinions the stress test, but your writing will inevitably improve as a result. Besides, any good editor will call you on it and you’ll have to fix them anyway.

VIII. Self-flattering literary references

This is a particular crutch of younger and newer writers, and it usually stems from an impulse to compensate for insecurity about why you’ve even been allowed to write this review (or, god forbid, it’s because you honestly believe you’re hot stuff in the lit world). I get it, you want to justify being in a position of judgment by establishing your literary bona fides and use the highfalutin reference as a tool to leverage your legitimacy. The thing is, you can spot these a mile away and it typically has the opposite effect.

So I would suggest that you avoid throwing in those references to Heraclitus and Anna Akhmatova unless you’re sure they’re organic. Often they have only the most tenuous relevance to the point at hand. Their only purpose is to show the reader that you are a reviewer with a breadth of knowledge at which the rest of us can only gape in wonder. What they actually show is that you can do a Quotables search for mentions of willow trees (hello, Ophelia!).

IV. Limiting assumptions

Increased diversity and more equitable representation in the lit world are unquestionably positive developments. But even if, for instance, a woman has written the novel, and it’s about women’s issues, and you are in fact a woman (or woman-identified), do not address your review as if no man will ever read the book, or the review. And, obviously, vice versa. The same goes for queer lit.

Let me put it this way: if you’re fawning I’m yawning.

Most general-interest journals are read by all kinds of people. And I’m sure the book’s author would prefer that you keep the potential readership as broad as possible. Again, let your deft description of plot and sharp analysis of the strengths and flaws of the writer’s work lead the reader to decide for themselves whether the book is going on the Buy Now list.

V. Structural seizures

Creating a pleasing, energizing flow for a piece of writing is a fine art, and book criticism has its own natural patterns. Bookending your piece anecdotally and thematically, with a kicker that cleverly calls back to your opening, is wise and satisfying, while frontloading plot exposition and reserving the back half mainly for critical analysis is a good, blunt structure.

By all means be creative, but the key is for the plot concerns to merge and re-merge with the critical concerns in a way that propels them all forward equally and efficiently in a single, coherent current. A review that has random blocks of plot description dumped here and there, out of order, requires the reader to do too much work sussing out what’s happening. And a review that frontloads a mass of critical analysis leaves the reader lost without a narrative context and characters to apply it to.

XI. Inconsistent pronouns

In making reference to the potential reader of the novel (and reader of the review), too often the reviewer uses a mix of pronouns that is disorienting. If you’re sometimes referencing “you” and sometimes “we” and other times “one” and somewhere else “reader” or “readers,” it’s sloppy and confusing. And then there’s the dreaded “I,” which we talked about earlier. The reader is forced to stop and ask, Who are you talking to again? Is “you” you or me? Why am I included in this “we?”

My thinking is, avoid using second person, and given Point 4 (Narcissism) I again strongly encourage you to keep your “I”s out of it unless you’re Joyce Carol Oates or Michelle Obama. Whenever possible, construct your review using “the reader” or “readers,” or, if you must, “we.” But the bottom line is, be consistent.

XII. Lack of criticism

For all this talk of book criticism, I’ve noticed an alarming lack of actual criticism going on. Too often reviews read like a breathless encomium for the back of a friend’s zine.

First of all, unmitigated praise is logically absurd. Every work of writing has its weaknesses, especially once personal tastes are factored in. It is your job to point to them, in a clear-eyed but tactful (and tactical) fashion that measures the work against reasonable standards for literature and/or its genre. If the prospect of hurting an author’s feelings causes you to hesitate, that’s a good sign that you’re likely to be respectful. If you aren’t willing to run that risk at all, you oughtn’t be reviewing books.

Second, you probably haven’t read 20,000 books, and the small percentage you have read includes maybe a handful of masterpieces. So I would be cautious about describing an obscure first- or second-time novelist’s work in lavish terms better reserved for writers with names such as Dickens and Wharton.

Third, how does it help your reader to gush all over a book with no larger context about how it compares to other works of this type, with no comment on stylistic mannerisms, dialogue, language, pacing, structure, setting, characterization, narrative coherence, or emotional authenticity? Let me put it this way: if you’re fawning I’m yawning.

The corollary to this is that a reflexively malicious pan fueled by creative envy is cruel and disingenuous. Don’t snark all over the place just because you’re in a position to. If the work you’ve been handed is truly that awful you’ll know in the first 50 pages, in which case politely decline the assignment and ask for another.

XIII. Conflict of interest

My bullshit detector goes off periodically when I note biographical, educational, or publication details in a reviewer’s history that show curious crossover with the author whose work he or she is ostensibly critiquing. When the review is a torrent of glowing praise it’s even more suspicious.

This is an easy one. Do not review anything by anyone you know or have had more than glancing contact with in your professional or personal life. The reason for this should be obvious. Otherwise authors may as well get their mothers to write the reviews. This goes for grudges, too. That kind of vengeful ambush is cheap and damages the publication that gave it a forum as much as it does the author and reviewer.

Clearly, social media and the overflowing world of MFA programs, retreats, and workshops allow writers to connect with their fellow strivers more than ever before. This is a wonderful thing, since too many of us are self-doubting isolationists who fear we only have friends for purposes of inspiring strange characters in our fiction. But it also engenders some corrupt quid pro quo masquerading as community support.

So if on the rare occasion that you alert your editor to a pre-existing relationship and you are still tasked with writing the review, then pull the Full Disclosure cord early in the piece. Your reader deserves to know if you have a dog in the fight—and if that dog has been neutered.