Literary Fiction | Sheree Christoffersen

Why I don’t give star ratings for book reviews

July 2, 2015 by Sheree 6 Comments

I know it’s accepted. I know it’s expected. I also know a creative work with the complexity of a novel can’t possibly be reduced to a five point rating scale.

I’m not saying other people shouldn’t use them. It’s the standard convention, and it seems to be what’s expected of reviewers. I’m just saying I have a lot of trouble with assigning them, so I avoid them if I can.

What does three or four stars mean, anyway? “I liked this book, but not as much as other books I’ve read.” Maybe. It doesn’t say anything about what I liked or didn’t like about it, whether I thought the language was beautiful or verbose, if the plot was well structured, whether it was paced skillfully or if the tone was uneven and confusing. A star rating says nothing about whether the characters were rounded and believable, too perfect or too evil, inconsistent or grew with the story arc.

Giving a rating also says nothing about whether a book is within my usual reading preferences or if I’ve stepped out to try something else, which can have a huge impact on my response to it. I’ve known some people to be blown away by the ‘amazing’ concepts of a literary novel with a smattering of science fiction, which were standard tropes in sci-fi twenty years ago. The reverse is also true, that those not used to the conventions of a genre can dismiss a novel out of hand because they don’t understand what the author is getting at in the first couple of chapters.

If I review a novel, my reasons for liking or disliking aspects of it can be just as important as how I respond to it. I’m unlikely to review a slasher horror novel because I don’t like reading that material, but if I did it would be unfair for me to give it a star rating out of five. I know – before reading it – I’d be unlikely to enjoy it, so while it might be an excellent slasher horror novel, it couldn’t get an honest high star rating from me.

We all respond to stories differently, and have different preferences. When I read a review I find the most interesting things are the details of the reviewer’s response to the novel. Do they think it was well written? What did they think of the characterization? The plot? Were there particular things they liked or didn’t like? Was this a typical genre for them, or a stretch? If not typical, does it encourage them to read more like this?

A star rating tells me none of this. I look at books I’ve read, and the thought of trying to reduce them to a number out of five makes me incredibly sad. I hate the thought of reducing the countless hours of imagination, toil and angst their authors have put into those words down into a number of stars.

Imagine if we did this with visual art. You would go into a gallery, and before each work everyone was able to write a review, and give the painting, sculpture or other artwork a rating out of five stars. It would be averaged and the rating displayed alongside the details of the piece. Perhaps the Archibald Prize People’s Choice Award would be the one with the highest average stars. Of course, we could extend it backwards and give a star rating to the masters; Monet and Van Gogh, Raphael, Michelangelo, Da Vinci …

Okay, maybe that’s going too far, but you see the point. Novels, good novels, can’t be reduced to a five point scale any more than works of art can be. So, I’m going to stick to reviewing without stars.

Do you know The Lady Bushranger?

May 8, 2015 by Sheree 2 Comments

What do you know about women bushrangers?

If your answer would be, ‘Not much,’ you wouldn’t be alone. Before I picked up The Burial by Courtney Collins, my response would have been, ‘What women bushrangers?’

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From: Old Images of Rylstone District

The Burial’s central character is inspired by the life of Jessie Hickman, Australia’s ‘Lady Bushranger’ who ran with her gang in the 1920s in the area now known as the Wollemi National Park, part of the Blue Mountains range between Lithgow and Muswellbrook. While other women were consorts of male bushrangers and some carried out daring exploits, Jessie Hickman is the only one who stands out as a mover and shaker on the bushranger scene in her own right.

It’s easy to see why Collins was captivated by her story. Sold off while still a child to a bush circus, she became a skilled rider and performer, developing the skills and confidence in her own abilities which allowed her to take off into the bush, and to escape captivity multiple times. Stories of her include riding off a cliff into a river to evade police, and escaping after being locked in a toilet on a train.

While she’s reputed to have married three times and had a cattle and horse rustling career over many years, The Burial concentrates on a short period of her life at the end of her third marriage. It’s a beautifully written novel, but perhaps it’s a testament to the skill of its author that for the most part I didn’t notice that as I read it. The prose is evocative, but doesn’t get in the way of the story or characters.

Collins doesn’t claim historical accuracy. A statement before the ‘Prelude’ reads, “This is a work of fiction – inspired by art, music, literature and the landscape, as much as the life and times of Jessie Hickman herself.” The narrative begins in the voice of a dead child and the burial of the novel’s title, but the story is primarily told from Jessie’s viewpoint as she heads into the mountain bushland, and that of Jack Brown, a half-Aboriginal drover/rustler and tracker. He and police sergeant Andrew Barlow are ‘inspired-by-life but mainly fictional characters’ (according to Collins), who provide the narrative of the search for Jessie and the hunter-versus-hunted tension.

This was one of those novels when I was looking out through the character’s eyes and couldn’t help contrasting my life with hers. To be sold off at a young age, essentially at the mercy of the men around you, be they kind and fair or lecherous and abusive, is it any wonder she chose to take her chances in the bush? A hundred years ago in Australia, when this novel is set, how many women suffered what she did but didn’t have the ability to survive in the bush or evade those who would come after them? I wonder how many tried – and died?

Of course, this type of scenario still happens, on large scales in countries where women are legally and socially oppressed and, closer to home, on smaller scales in secret. It’s a moot point to ask if Jessie Hickman would still have ended up on the wrong side of the law if she hadn’t been exposed to such abuse and injustice. We’ll never know. What we do know is that abuse and injustice distorts and destroys lives.

A book like The Burial helps remind us of that.

Links: Courtney Collins website
The Burial will be released in the US at the end of May under the title The Untold.
Her upcoming novel is entitled The Walkman Mix.

More about Jessie Hickman

by Di Moore

A newspaper article on Di Moore and her non-fiction book
about Jessie Hickman, Out of the Mists

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Australian Women Writer’s Challenge

I saw Courtney Collins interviewing Favel Parrett (Past the Shallows) and Brooke Davis (Lost and Found) as Newcastle Writers Festival 2015

Going ‘Past the Shallows’, Favel Parrett

April 6, 2015 by Sheree 1 Comment

I pushed the door open a crack and peeked in. The room was full, only scattered seats around the room, and I didn’t want to make a disturbance.

I pushed a bit harder and the usher on the end of a row jumped up and opened the door for me, pointing to a lone empty seat a couple of rows ahead of her. I ducked down, trying not to attract any attention or distract the three young women on the podium.

I needn’t have worried. The audience was captivated by the considered, melodious voices of Favel Parrett and Brooke Davis discussing writing ‘Through the Eyes of a Child’ – creating a child protagonist in an adult novel – with Courtney Collins. In the Sunday morning session at Newcastle Writers Festival there was an atmosphere of calm, of depth, and of respect for all three women. Each had an air of being acquainted with the grim side of life without succumbing to cynicism, and a maturity I’d expect from women many years older.

I read Favel Parrett’s Past the Shallows before the books by Collins or Davis for aesthetic reasons unconnected to literary quality. Its format was smaller, the type large and easy on eyes that were overtired at the time, and I loved the feel of the book. The edition I have (pictured) has that lovely matt velvet finish that publishers are using to lure in those of us who are swayed by tactile as well as visual qualities. Heaven help my credit card bill if they find a way to add aromas like ‘salt-beach’ or ‘fresh-baked bread’ to the normal new-book smell.

Having begun Past the Shallows, I didn’t take long to finish it. Even considering my compulsive concurrent reading, I couldn’t leave the fate of its two young protagonists hanging in the air.

The novel is about two young brothers, Miles and Harry, who live in a small community on Tasmania’s coast with their abusive, often drunk father. Scraping a living collecting abalone, often in illegal waters, their father makes the young teenage Miles work on his boat, while Harry escapes only because of intractable sea-sickness. The only relative they truly like and trust, their older brother, Joe, is about to leave for fairer climes in a boat he’s built himself. Harry’s wide-eyed innocence and fear, along with Miles’ protective instincts towards his little brother and attempts at placating his father, create a tension that sweeps the novel forward.

A vague mystery surrounds their mother’s death in a car accident a few years earlier and their father’s animosity towards Harry. An aunt takes only a distant interest. A loved grandfather has died, leaving them stranded. What will they do without Joe around? Who can they run to, once he’s gone?

The prose of this novel is deceptively simple, written alternately from Harry’s and Miles’ point of view. Perhaps in this case Castiglione‘s definition of sprezzatura is apt:

… to practice … so as to conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.

The writing does indeed appear effortless, but I’m sure it was anything but a long, emotionally exhausting process. But as we follow Harry through the bush to make friends with a secluded neighbour’s dog, or Miles as he climbs shivering aboard his father’s boat in the pre-dawn hours, we never doubt the authenticity of their voices. We see through their eyes, fear as they fear, and wonder along with them how they can best survive their father’s whims and tempers.

This novel has stayed with me. I think it will stay with me for a long time. Favel Parrett’s second book, When The Night Comes, has just been announced in the long list of the Miles Franklin Award. Having read Past the Shallows, I don’t doubt it’s deserved. I’ll read her second one, eventually. When this one stops haunting me.

Links: Favel Parrett’s website

I’ll be reviewing Lost and Found by Brooke Davis and The Burial by Courtney Collins in coming weeks.

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