Review Confessional

I'm not going to mess around with this: I hate writing negative reviews. Take zero pleasure from it. Know how hard it is to write a for-the-ages-sentence, let alone a book. Haven't met a writer yet who hasn't hoped for a warm (okay: rousing) reception, and while I'm always true to a reviewer's purpose (honesty, clarity), while that is what I am paid to do, what readers of reviews are owed, I try my best not to strut, as a reviewer, not to declaim, not to scold. Because where's the humanity in that? Where's the reach?

But I was challenged a few months ago by Alice Sebold's THE ALMOST MOON. I couldn't find redemption in those pages, couldn't walk myself away from the simmering conclusion that the book was designed, first and foremost, to shock, to singe. I questioned, most of all, the author's purpose, which is an ugly thing to do, strictly puritanical and judgmental, but there I am today, casting and declaiming and maybe even scolding in the pages of the Chicago Tribune, and still wishing that I could have found another way to talk about the story.