Blogelstein!

Kate Atkinson tells Hay festival she’d rather not be a published author | Books | guardian.co.uk

Today I read my first bad review: a profoundly bad review, which I stumbled upon in a paper that I never read, because Ben had brought it home and left it on the coffee table. I had promised myself not to read any reviews, but there was the headline and there was the review and there was me, with quite a lot of self-control, but not that much.

And much as I know that everyone gets bad reviews - and that, of course, I have written them - and that the most especially hurtful statement in said review was inaccurate, it still kind of ruined my day. ‘I should be so lucky as to get bad reviews’, I used to say, because it will be confirmation that my book is read, that people notice it. And indeed, I am lucky. But my luck is accompanied by a sharp intake of breath when I think about it, because now I know how it feels to have this particular form of luck.

But: will this change my own approach as a reviewer of other people’s books? Will it affect the extent to which I feel satisfied about executing what I believe to be an especially cutting, witty line about a book that I loathe? Oh, probably not. Nor should it.