What kills me about lazy book reviews is that they don’t! even! accomplish! the fundamental responsibility of a critic—to take a book seriously, take the reader of the review seriously, and actually try to understand what is happening in the book and whether the author’s project is successful.

A book review is not a vessel for one-liners. I very impractically and idealistically think of the book review as an act of service to a broader literary community, one that cares about style and meaning and quality. A book review can have zingy one-liners (Parul Sehgal’s recent pan of Manguso’s Liars did an exceptional job of this), but the one-liners are in service of actually trying to understand and critically evaluate the book…it’s really obvious when a critic has performed a shallow read of a novel and collected just enough info for their premeditated pan.

I liked what

Rather than being merely cliched or trite, Rooney is writing in a mode that Manov isn’t interested in. It is perfectly acceptable to dislike that mode, but it is a weak and mean-spirited form of criticism—in theTLS!—to be so dismissive without even noting what it is you are dismissing.