Dafna Izenberg is a magazine editor with more than 20 years experience, currently working at the The Walrus as a features editor.

How to write a great book review

I’ve written dozens, possibly hundreds, of pieces recommending books, “rounding” them up, and occasionally critically reviewing them. I’m not sure any of these can be called “great,” but they were great fun to write and I cared almost equally about each of them, even those that were no longer than 50 words. So, maybe that’s the first tip I can share on the question of writing about books: enjoy yourself. Also, do a good job.

Through the early-to-mid 2010s, I contributed regularly to Maclean’s weekly book section, in which appeared six largely positive writeups on current titles. I was assigned books I’d never have otherwise picked up, about reptile smugglers, the history of chocolate, Marie Curie, an orphan orca named Luna. I was assigned fiction by authors I’d never, to my shame, heard of before: Henning Mankell, Watler Mosley, Lore Segal. I also read work by writers I already greatly admired, including David Szalay and Ross Raisin. I devoured Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries. When she came to Toronto after winning the Booker, I had the chance to interview her. 

I developed a few steadfast rules: 1) always read to the last page. Only once did I not, and I lived in horror thereafter that I’d written something erroneous, not having actually finished the book; 2) always have a pen at hand. I am a person who writes, in ink, in books. I underline, makesnotes in the margins, dog-ear pages and write on the flaps. This helps me both remember and retrieve moments I might want to come back to in a review. I keep my trusty pen—of which I have several, all the same—everywhere I read; 3) always have at least one night’s sleep between finishing a book and starting a review. It’s amazing how much gets metabolized overnight. 

Once, during these years of writing for Maclean’s, I was on an Internet date with someone I’d never met before—and never saw again. It’s amazing how much you can figure out in the company of strangers. I was talking about my work, and the reviews, and suddenly I said something I had been thinking for some time without realizing it. “Books are people,” I said.

What I meant was that every book has its own logic, its own integrity, its own personality, its own life. It was an idea of books that helped me “meet” each one with an open mind, even if I was already very familiar with the writer’s work. Each book is its own entity, and each encounter with that book amounts to a discrete relationship; each reader will see something different in each book. In a sense, reading involves two people—the reader and the book. 

Now I work at The Walrus, where we recently launched a new books section, a double-page spread in every issue that features three brief reviews of recent titles. In these, a premium is placed on voice; we are determined to deliver reviews that make clear what the reviewer thought of each book, that bring to life the relationship that took hold between the book and the reviewer, that make for thought-provoking reading in and of themselves. 

Sermon time: Books are our most strenuous and thoughtful medium, the biggest investment we make in sharing and receiving experience and ideas. Reviews ought to be the place readers can find the smartest, most honest, and most interesting discourse about books. Dave Eggers famously lectured reviewers: “Do not dismiss a book until you have written one.” I understand where he was coming from—writing a book is a sh-t-ton of work, dismissed in what seems a heartbeat by a negative review. But his plea makes no sense. The role of the reviewer is not to empathize with the author of a book. The role of a reviewer is to read, to think, to reflect, and then to share with their own readers as honest, clear and entertaining a report on that book as possible.