Perhaps you’d like to guess which novel this is?
‘Great premise, appallingly written. The plot is replete with unexplained co-incidences and impossibilities…. Tedious, lacking any credible plot-line, immature and over-written in the extreme.’
Mary Shelley, eat your (or some random corpse’s) heart out! Yes, this is an extract from a one-star review of Frankenstein.
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| 'appallingly written...tedious' |
I’ve blogged before about the brilliant and hilarious reviews people are leaving, such that creative Amazon reviews are becoming a genre of their own. Check out the Mr Men books,
Bic’s pens ‘for her’,
banana slicers, etc for some all-star gems, if you've not already enjoyed them.
Now, to make us all feel better, let us enjoy the one-star review – in all its nasty glory – always more enjoyable when dumped on some other writer’s self-esteem. It was some enjoyable facebook posts by renowned actor, director and author Fidelis Morgan (check her website out
here) which set me off finding these, so my thanks to her.
Here are some more.
‘I love the story of Oliver Twist and thought it great to download for free but it was written in Victorian english and was difficult to follow or enjoy.’ Why oh why did Dickens write in Victorian ‘english’, the fool? Think of the success he might have had! Doh!
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| Oops, Dickens messed up with this one! |
This one is headed ‘I have given this book more stars than it deserves’, ie one.
‘I will not go into the storyline because I do not want to bore you. Basically these old fashioned girls that nobody cares about act stupidly about foppish gentlemen. All the characters are shallow, pathetic and materialist. This is an out of touch womans' book for the naive.’ Sense and Sensibility, just another mistake in Austen’s long flop of a career.
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| 'shallow, pathetic and materialist' another flop for Jane A! |
‘Disappointed with this. Very boring, nothing happens. Cannot understand why it is so popular.’ There are quite a few similar ones for Little Women. But Lord of the Flies fares no better: ‘without doubt, the most dull, sleep-inducing and boring novel I have ever read in my entire life.’
Here’s Wuthering Heights, through the jaundice-coloured but literate specs of one 'R Asplin': ‘Oh for heaven's sake Bronte, give over…. Jeez Louise, is there anything remotely likeable or identifiable in the gruelling, wind swept, dark brooding heavy-browed, heavy booted stomping, yelling, bickering, cursing, beatings and rain-lashed untimely sickly deaths of this 356 page "gothic" drear-fest….
Didn't care, wasn't remotely interested. Bugger off out of my window-oh-woah-woah Cathy, you're letting the draft in.’ I do kind of know what they mean… sorry Catherine Czerkawska!
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| Heathcliff is still sobbing about this one star review... |
And for fairness, though I’m deeply grateful for the mostly good reviews my books have garnered on Amazon, here are a couple of stinkers. On
Lydia Bennet’s Blog: ‘I did not like this book at all’, typical Brit understatement, while over the Pond, I got ‘Maybe I'm just too old to appreciate this, so I asked my friend's teen daughter to read a few chapters and tell me what she thought…”Dated and pretty lame", was her response. Yeah, that says it.’ Dated as in set in the Regency? Dated as in the modern slang had dated by several years after it was written? Still, Lydia Bennet would give just such a review to any book other than her own.
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| Dissed on both sides of the Atlantic! Result! |
And this one, for my faithful first crime novel
The Rotting Spot, which I felt was a rite of passage as it’s in the characteristic tone of the troll: ‘I can't believe this book has so many good reviews, the relationship between the two main characters is childish, and the stereotyping pathetic. Avoid unless you are desperate there are so many other books to read.’ Yay, the desperate demographic is mine, all mine!
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| Desperation fodder. Thank you, I'm here all week! |
Oh well, at least I’m in good company. Do you have a fave one-star to share?
Find out more about my various projects and productions on valerielaws.com (books, art installations etc)
Some of my thirteen books are now on Kindle UK US, iBooks UK US, Kobo, Nook and more, on all platforms worldwide.
Follow me on Twitter @ValerieLaws or find me on facebook
Comments
I don't think you need to worry about your one-stars - Amazon has given us real readers plenty of practice in weighing up reviews. And Lydia Bennett's slang was bound to date - over 40 years ago a publisher warned me to avoid slang because it dates so fast. But how else could Lydia speak at the moment when you wrote it?
Your ingenious de-construction of Austen, and your wit won't date. I love that book: it's as intelligent as it is funny.
If I could give this no stars, I would. Kirton breaks every basic rule of writing - he tells and he tells and he tells. I was so punch drunk by the poor writing, I lost track of whether or not the story was any good. By then I had lost the will to live. Sorry, Mr K.
And I couldn't take any comfort from the fact that the late Susanna Yager, in the Sunday Telegraph, found it 'thoughtful; and thought-provoking' and said it 'ought to bring Bill Kirton the attention he deserves'. because it didn't. So AnnieR was right.
I'm back here to make up for Valerie's one-stars by offering her these three potted reviews - http://authorselectricreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/review-of-all-that-lives-poetry-of-sex.html