Are We Really Supposed to Believe?

I love book reviewers. There are few I trust enough to read prior to reading a book, but it is my normal policy to read several reviews on a book after I’ve read it. I like to see if I missed anything– from deeper metaphorical concepts embedded in the simple text, to plot holes.

From what I see in comments sections of book reviews, and from my few attempts to muster up more than a sentence on a book, book reviewing is hard. Someone always thinks you missed something, or disagrees.

There’s a million different aspects to review– from the overall punch, to the writing, to the characters, to the language, to the flow. I try to keep that in mind before working myself up over a review.

If someone thinks that Mark Twain had a “middling grasp of language”, well, the rest of us must be babbling, poo-throwing monkeys– so what would be the point of flinging my word-poo at her?

Mostly, I just consider these types of comments to be my litmus test for whether or not I want to revisit a book reviewer. If we disagree this adamantly, we’ll disagree on everything.

I’m not saying you have to like Mark Twain for me to read your reviews, because I think there’s a lot of valid reasons to dislike his work (even though he remains a personal favorite). You just have to dislike his work for a reason that makes sense.

Like the plots.

Sorry, Sammy.

Sometimes, book reviewers stretch outside their comfort zones. A sci-fi reviewer picks up a romance novel. A regular reviewer picks up their first geek book. They always pick a beloved classic of the other genre because that’s the only type of book that lures a reviewer out of their zone.

It makes me cringe because I know this stretching won’t work out for me– the genre-less reader– even if they like the book that I probably love.

It’s all because of this question that people have to write into reviews when they are unfamiliar with a genre. It goes like this:

Are we really supposed to believe…

Yes.

However you intend to finish that question, the answer is yes.

Because it is a work of fiction, and we are readers. Suspension of disbelief is built into our part of our reader-writer dance.

When reading a romance novel, you entertain the possibility that an unlikely sequence of events could toss two intended-lovers together.

When reading a space story, you have to believe people can live in space and still light their cigarettes.

When reading a fantasy novel, magic exists if the author tells you it exists.

The sentence wiggles under my skin for so many reasons:

There is usually hypocrisy embedded within the thought. You believe in wookies, but not true love? You believe that a king would marry a sweeper girl, but not that a child could lead a legion of dragons to war? All genres, all books, require a certain amount of belief.
The question is often a result of applying modern-day morals to stories that take place in different times, planets, countries, spaces, eras, etc. “Are we really supposed to believe that this 14-year-old girl truly met the love of her life and was ready to embark in married life?” Yes, if the lifespan of people in this world is about 28, and if children become fully educated in a matter of years, and if she has reigned as queen by herself for 8 years, why not?
It implies a problem with the premise, but if you really can’t believe it– the problem is with the writing, not the premise. Premises of all books are very often asinine. It’s the writer’s job to use language and characters to make you forget all about that. If you didn’t forget, and you truly gave it a fair shake, then the problem is with the language and characters. Suggesting that the premise is ridiculous is very often insulting to the hundreds of other books in the same genre that are able to turn the improbable premise into the possible story.

There are situations where the question feels entirely appropriate, sure. We’ve all read books where the writer does too little, and asks for too much in return. I would argue that it’s never a fair question to ask because the problem is not in how much we were asked to believe, it’s with the writer’s ability to make us feel good about taking that leap.