Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Coastliners - my view

I have finished Coastliners by Joanne Harris. Good story on the whole. I was irritated by some things like repetitions that a good editor would have caught. Are there no good editors anymore? Do previously published authors not get edited? I know that Margaret Atwoods books suffer from a lack of attention/discipline; if the author isn't himself ( generic masculine folks) disciplined to keep his writing tight then it is the editors' job to tell him what is needed. Does this get too hard with someone of the stature of Margaret Atwood? Or is it because the publisher thinks the book will sell anyway "on the name alone"? But it is aggravating when I see such things slip through detracting from what would otherwise be a good book. Do they think the reader doesn't notice? Perhaps they think we shouldn't care? But it does make me think less of the author because I say to myself "why didn't she catch that?"

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Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
Dorothy Parker, Not So Deep as a Well (1937)