A deliciously entertaining but instructive controversy has arisen over the review of The Greek Seaman, a self-published novel by an English writer named Jacqueline Howett.  A reviewer writing under the handle “BigAl” posted a critique describing the story as “compelling and interesting.” But he also slammed it for being rife with spelling and grammatical errors.  He gave the book two stars and complained “Reading shouldn’t be that hard.”

Whereupon the author lost it. First she blamed the proofing problems on the fact that BigAl had reviewed a flawed copy of the book. “You obviously didn’t read the second clean copy I requested you download that was also reformatted, so this is a very unfair review.” Then she marshaled positive Amazon reviews to prove her book deserved more stars than BigAl had awarded it. Then she got out the knives and took after BigAl personally, calling him names, insisting he withdraw his review and demanding that he come out and fight like a man and answer private emails she sent him.

A host of commenters rushed to BigAl’s support, accusing the author of unprofessionalism. Finally BigAl defended himself in a comment of his own, citing such solecisms as:

“She carried her stocky build carefully back down the stairs.”

and

“Don and Katy watched hypnotically Gino place more coffees out at another table with supreme balance.”

We have not read the book and cannot judge its literary or grammatical merits. We can however draw some inferences from the author’s rabid attacks on her tormenters:

  • “Al was given the option of a free copy from smashwords the following day to download in any format he preffered…”
  • “…you could choose any format you wanted to read it in and if their were any spelling mistakes they were corrected.”
  • “This is not only discusting and unprofessional on your part, but you really don’t fool me AL”
  • “Your the target not me!”
  • “Just look at your ball all of you”
  • “Why read the wrong copy? that don’t make sense.”
  • “Also in the new copy you did not have to click at all to get to the next page on Kindle, so thats how I now he never downloaded the clean copy.”
  • “You are a big rat and a snake with poisenous venom.”

It’s hard not to concur with the anonymous commenter who said “The best part is that even your comments, Jacqueline, are full of misspellings, awkward phrasing, grammatical errors, and typos. So I’m certain those creep into your writing. And if you didn’t have a good editor (or even an editor at all), then it’s not hard to believe what the reviewer is saying.”

Ms. Howett’s response?

“Fuck off!”

You can read it all here.

Richard Curtis

Thanks to SRB.