Tayari's Blog: THE THING ABOUT ANONYMOUS REVIEWERS

A good friend of mine has a book coming out on the very same day as The Untelling. (I won't "out" her here; she may be performing a more dignified response to being jacked.) Anyway, an anonymous reviewer for a certain publication SLAMMED us both. It was uncanny. I decided that it was the same reviewer because similar insults were used to describe us both and the method of degredation was identical.

I asked her, "Do you think we've both been humiliated and debased by the same person??"

She said, "I don't know. Maybe they just use a machine."

But really, since that terrible day, we have both received some really nice reviews for our books. Our work has been called "deep-felt", "compelling," "skillfull" and all those other adjectives reviewers use to let you know that they approve of what you've done. But still, we can't let go of the snarky review that came out a couple of weeks prior.

So this has got me obsessing over anonymous reviews. Although I have put a bounty out on the head of the man or machine that was so cruel to my new book, I can sort of understand the impulse to be a nasty reviewer when your name is not attached to it. Who hasn't fantasized about sending unsigned notes to people at work, letting them know how you REALLY feel. "Dear So and So, Your perfume is horrible. It smells like feet."

I remember an incident that took place at my elementary school. Imagine this: a little girl receives an anonymous note in her cubby. It reads, quite simply: NOBODY LIKES YOU.

She looks around the class wondering who sent such a note. Could it be true?, she wonders although there is a part of her that knows this could not possibly be the case. (Afterall, she has been invited to a dozen birthday parties in the last year alone!) The little girl is not the same for weeks to come. She becomes paranoid, wondering if the people who actually like he are just pretending to like her.

Let's now imagine the writer of the note, sitting only rows away, chuckling at the little girl's dirstress. Let's watch the writer of the note as a visitor enters class.

It's career day! The visitor points at the creator of viscious notes who is busy practising left-handed cursive so as to disguise his handwriting. The visitor asks, "What do you want to be when YOU grow up?"

The note-writer pauses, furrows his evil little brow and says, "I want to be a book reviewer. The kind where you don't have to sign your name."