Clarissa's Blog

An anonymous commenter says:

This is what happens when you say anything that is not wildly enthusiastic about Jane Austen. I don’t know any other author who provokes this obsessive protectiveness.

I know one such other writer.

It’s Ken Follett. I once wrote a critical review of his most recent novel and people got simply rabid. I’m a passionate reader but it would never occur to me to get so worked up because somebody didn’t like the same book I did.

The culmination of that debate was when one of my detractors discovered that I also once wrote a positive review for Tampax tampons.

“See, she writes good reviews for something so nasty,” he exclaimed gleefully. “Of course, she is incapable of understanding Follett!”

I still haven’t found a connection between tampons and Follett’s book, but people’s minds work in strange ways.