Blog Post #7

Defining Good

I crossed paths with a neighbor the other day who saw that I was carrying Edward St.
Aubyn’s The Patrick Melrose Novels. “How do you like the book?” he asked.

“I’m loving it,” I answered.

“Really, I couldn’t stand it. Did you get to the part with the drugs yet?”

“Just starting it. I didn’t expect it to be such a hard book, but the writing is unbelievable.”

I then bumped into the man’s wife with a few mutual friends and we had the same
conversation again. For all of them, it was just too hard to read. Drug binges are only part of
it; a father’s cruelty is evident in the first pages when he drowns and incinerates ants, verbally
eviscerates his “friends” who tolerate it, and then molests his five-year-old son. Yes, it’s
an unbelievably hard read but the writing is brilliant and the characters become real people,
although ones you don’t want to be with. (Another complaint from my friends.)

So what does it mean to say a book is good? Since joining Goodreads two months ago,
I’ve been thinking about this question a lot. I’ve been tempted not to rate books. It seems like
such a mathematical measurement for a subjective experience. I’ve also had to struggle with
the question as a judge of an essay contest for medical school students for the Arnold P. Gold
Foundation for Humanism in Medicine. We are asked to score the essays from 1-6 based on
content and 1-4 based on writing. It’s easy when the content is great to give the excellent writer
a high writing score. But what about the person whose use of language is unique, who writes
excellent dialogue, and whose metaphors are sunbursts, but who doesn’t say anything? Can that
person be a good writer?

Can content and quality of writing be separated? Can a book be brilliant even though, rather
than knock your socks off, it makes you want to cover not just your feet but to burrow under
a down quilt? Or, is a book that you keeps you riveted good even though it is poorly written?
(Fifty Shades of Gray anyone?)

There’s a difference between judging a book as good as opposed to likeable. This is what
I think about when I pick my number of stars. Am I conveying that I liked the book or that I
thought it was good? I actually don’t know the answer to that question. When I rated Chris
Cleave’s new book, Gold, I gave it four stars because I love his writing but the story in the book
disappointed me in so many ways. If I had given him two or three stars would that have been
more accurate?

These are all questions that I keep in mind in terms of my own writing. My book,
Motherhood Exaggerated, is, in my view a literary memoir. I want the writing to lead the reader
into the depths of his or her own life, not just my own. But when the story is about a mother’s
journey of growth during her daughter’s treatment for cancer, it becomes a sick-kid book or a
survivor story and the topic becomes the reason for reading it. The topic is very important to me

but so is attracting readers who are looking for good writing.

Over the years, I have become much more broadminded about the books I choose to read.
Increasingly, I pick up books like The Patrick Melrose Novels precisely because I don’t see any
obvious intersection with my own life. Then I start to read and I find myself reacting and then
learning things about myself based upon how I react.

So maybe that’s the sign of a good book. It teaches you what you don’t yet know about your
own self and about the world.