Splinters

Last month, without commenting on the novel Double Vision itself, I said my heart sank at the clich?d name of Pat Barker's latest heroine (Kate Frobisher). Sam Leith confirms my prejudice with this gobsmacked review in the Telegraph:

What is wrong with Double Vision? Everything is wrong with it. It is an Aga saga in fancy dress. It is badly, no, barely, structured overall; its insights, such as they are, are remorselessly banal; its sentences are repetitious; its conceits second-hand; its characters stereotypical; its metaphors off-the-peg. Scarcely a sentence passes that is not either silly, or boring, or contains a second-order clich?.

A friend recently questioned the worth of negative criticism. It is perhaps best to concentrate on the positive and proceed from there. Also, it has to be said that flat, unimaginative writing can often be the best vehicle for exciting tales: think of Robert Harris and Stephen King. But Pat Barker is held up as the readable side of Literary Fiction, hence Sam Leith's exclamatory response. But the thing I like most about negative criticism is: it's great fun.