The strange case of paying to have your book eviscerated at RNZ
A publisher has had to make a payment for the privilege of one of their books being slaughtered on Radio New Zealand's popular Nine to Noon programme.
Sonja de Friez reviewed – as in slaughtered, as in just about the meanest review of all times – The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer on the show last Wednesday. The author grew up in New Zealand and now lives in England; it's her debut novel, published by Moa Press, the new imprint from publishers Hachette. Her novel is based on the 17th century witch hunts in East Anglia. De Friez hated it – and Hachette (which de Friez mispronounced, actually very appositely, as "hatchet") got the bill for it.
An interesting little operation goes on behind the scenes of the book review slot at Nine to Noon. Nothing sinister, just a practical attempt to give airtime to books - with a stipend.
Booksellers New Zealand, a quango formed in the interests of its member bookshops, acts as a kind of transfer station between publishers and Radio New Zealand. Publishers wanting their book to be considered for a place on the Nine to Noon review slot are required to pay Booksellers $15 + GST per title.
Publishers have no guarantee that a book will make it onto the programme once the $15 + GST is paid, and neither is there a guarantee that the $15 + GST guarantees a glowing review. Reviewing is always a lottery. Publishers take their chances. A quirk of the Nine to Noon set-up is that reviews aren’t commissioned to individual reviewers; a pool of reviewers are offered the books, and it’s down to them which books they wish to review. This is not a practice that has any place in the literary tyrannies of ReadingRoom, but it's standard procedure at some media – I used to take my pick of paperbacks from a large cupboard at the Dominion newsroom on Willis St when I wrote a paperback round-up every four weeks.
The Booksellers and RNZ review team are a bit of motley pool. Alongside established authors such as David Hill, Paul Diamond and Harry Ricketts, there are a number of booksellers such as Ray Shipley at Scorpio Books in Christchurch and Carole Beu at the Women's Bookshop in Auckland, plus former New Zealand Review of Books co-editor Louise O'Brien, and quite a few people who I've never heard of.
I'd never heard of Sonja de Friez. In fact she is a former TV3 reporter. Her partner Phil Vine is also a TV reporter and occasional reviewer on Nine to Noon. A bookish household; but it's unlikely their shelves still retain a copy of The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer.
Reviews on Nine to Noon usually feature at 10.35am each weekday morning. The show's host Kathryn Ryan may or may not add her own comment. She made no comment during the de Friez review of The Witching Tide. There probably wasn't much she could add other than, "Jesus Christ."
The review was like a defiance of gravity – it started at the bottom, and yet managed to find a way to go downhill from there.
"This in my view," de Friez announced, "is an absolutely terrible book."
And then: "Overall it lacks imagination…It’s full of clichés…It's riddled with metaphors….It was lazy, if I may say. The character development is weak. I read it quickly because it made me cross. It makes me cross when I see bad books being published.
"The storyline is confused and long-winded, and most importantly the writing is terrible. It’s awful. It's really difficult to read a book that's written badly."
She concluded, "Don’t ever pick up this book."
When I looked her up, I learned de Friez had once given one of my books a good review. God bless and look over her. But her Nine to Noon slaughtering of The Witching Tide is merely a set of childish opinions ("it made me cross"!) of a book so hot, so in demand, that it was acquired by UK publishers Phoenix (and Scribner in the US) after winning a seven-way auction.
Earlier this year Moa Press sent out samples from its 2023 catalogue. I searched for it after the de Friez review, and found a 12-page excerpt from The Witching Tide, that "absolutely terrible book".
It seems to be the opening chapter. Meyer writes of three thugs shoving aside a woman and bursting into a house, where a man tries to stop them: "They struck him in his face and ribs with their staves and then turned for the kitchen. She pushed herself onto her knees and crawled after them, trying to call Master Kit's name. The curtain rail splintered as they wrenched it. Cloth poured onto the floor. Prissy had been shelling peas into a dish. Martha heard it break, the hail of green beads, Prissy's animal wail. Curses she had not heard before coming from the men's throats. They left dragging Prissy between them like a heifer bound for the slaughter-house."
The rest of it was tense, exciting, vivid; the period detail was rich and evocative; the character of Martha, a mute, was powerfully rendered; plus there's a creepy scene towards the end of the chapter where Martha digs out a wax doll, a "poppet", melts it in a pot, and listens to its secret incantations.
By all means pick up this book. This in my view – brought to you sans a $15 + GST stipend – is absolutely brilliant writing.
The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer (Moa Press, $37.99) is available in bookstores nationwide.
