Ordinarily
I give short shrift to Amazon's “customer reviews,” unless I'm
considering a new author or a new book by a familiar author. When I
went to pick a Ruth Rendell novel my only experience with her work
was a short story, “The Irony of Hate,” which I enjoyed. As my
knowledge of her was limited mostly to the fact she was a highly
esteemed British crime writer, I assumed my neighborhood public
library would be a likely place to find one of her novels. An
excellent assumption, as it turned out. I chose the likely looking
Not
in the Flesh,
took it home and read it.
Only
then, after finishing Not
in the Flesh and
curious to see what others had made of it, did
I scan the customer reviews. Many praised the novel, but their praise
seemed a tad strained, as if they were reluctant to say anything bad
about an author who in the past had given them so many hours of
pleasure. I read a few professional reviews, and therein detected a
pretty much consistent faint tone of the “faint praise” damnation
reserved for works by hitherto venerable authors. I forgot to check
if Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times's dragon lady notorious for
not pulling punches (especially with male authors) if
she'd weighed
in on Not
in the Flesh.
Perhaps she filed this quickie under the pseudonym “Larry” on the
Amazon site. If so she captured my take to a tee:
At
some point I didn't care enough to see the crimes solved, but I stuck
with it to the end.
“Larry”
was kind enough to give it two stars out of a possible five.
