When Reviewers Get It

Seeing one’s books reviewed is always both exciting and nerve-wracking. After all, any author who publishes a scholarly book will have worked for years to get everything right: the myriad details, the larger picture, the writing style … as well as, closer to publication, the bibliography, proof-reading, permissions to use photographs … the list is endless.

And then, once the book is out there in the world, a few people will have the unenviable job of boiling its contents down to anywhere between 600–2000 words – which involves both giving a summary of the book’s main points and a concise evaluation of the author’s work.

When it comes to reviews, I really cannot complain. They have, almost unfailingly, been very kind. For example, when my first book was published in Iceland in 2009, it received five-star reviews in all three major newspapers at the time, which was a rare occurrence. (Only one major newspaper still reviews books, so getting a "full house" across three publications is no longer possible in Iceland.) Several of my later books have also received five-star reviews, which is the highest mark one can get in Iceland – unlike, for example, in Denmark where the scale goes up to six stars.

Sometimes, though, even an excellent review can somehow “miss the point” or focus on insignificant details without giving the reader a sense of what the book really is about – or what the author’s intention was. I remember feeling that some of the more extensive scholarly reviews of my first book, for example, completely failed to recognize the significant archival work that had gone into it, and instead focused on matters of style or layout – for example, whether to use endnotes (which I do) or footnotes (which some reviewers preferred). But then again, not all reviewers are scholars themselves, and thus they may not be able to fully appreciate the nuances of the work that goes into creating an academic monograph.

In any case, I have been particularly pleased, in the last few months, that Music at World’s End has received several very positive reviews, both in scholarly publications like Notes and Scandinavian Studies, and on online platforms like MusicWeb International. In Notes, for example, Juilliard’s Jane Gottlieb calls it an “expertly researched book” with “an enormous amount of information and keen insights,” while Dominic Hartley (MusicWeb International) praises me for doing a “magnificent job with this book. The research is formidable but lightly worn: the narrative moves with the pace of good biography, lucid where the material is tangled, humane throughout, and scrupulous in separating what can be documented from what must be surmised.”

This is all very kind, of course, and makes me feel like the five years I spent researching and writing this book were not in vain. But while I appreciate such praise, I am far more delighted to see that these reviewers truly understand what I tried to do in this book. To quote Hartley again: “It would be hard to find in recent history a plainer demonstration of the cultural good that immigrants bring to the society that receives them: three men admitted grudgingly, by exception, who repaid the favour with the foundations for a national musical life. Goodness knows that is a lesson to be heeded today.” Knowing that a reader – whether a reviewer or not – was able to fully grasp the message that you were trying to get across – for a writer, this is truly the best reward of all.