I haven’t looked up anything regarding my first book, The War Requiem (Essay Press), in a long time. I used to check up on reviews and on stock numbers, but the impulse to do this drifted away the longer the book was out in the world. It is a niche book, a very experimental literary work, and tbh it is probably not for everyone! It made it into a second printing, was a finalist for the MN Book Awards, and my little brother read it. It also got almost exclusively five stars by the people bold enough to read it! (Yes, bold!) All of these things hold equal weight for me.
If you’d like to know more about my book, please check out my website here. It’s strange—the book came out four years ago now and while it will always be mine, it also feels very far away from me now.
So! Imagine my surprise when I decided to check my book‘s listing on Goodreads this morning for the first time in over a year to see that the number of reviews it had had doubled since the last time I looked.
Yes! That’s right! My reviews jumped from 12 to 30 in the past year! Now, that may not sound like a lot. But it is for me and my weird lil indie hybrid mashup of historical fiction/memoir/research about an off-the-walls piece of classical music that is well-regarded but not easy to listen to. I was ecstatic to see this many reviews, especially so recently. My book came out over four years ago. These new reviews mean my book has a life of its own and is still finding its way into readers’ hands.
And one of those readers gave my book two stars! Her name is Becky. She left no review, just a rating. I have no idea why, but this tickled me for some reason. Want to know what else tickled me? The next book she read was an autobiography by the Pope. The Pope also got two stars.
You might be wondering if I was an even a smidgen upset that someone gave me two stars, but I honestly wasn’t.
I spent seven years writing and editing that book. I am immensely proud of it because it helped me wrestle with questions about art and suffering and how those things coexist in this fraught and complicated, often cruel world. I am proud of that book because I moved through its creation on intuition with a deep sense of trust in my ability to experiment (which really means my ability to fail). I am proud of that book because it reminds me of the supportive teachers and friends who sustained my spirit while writing, and the fact that I let them all in to help. I am proud of that book because it is so much bigger than me, even though I wrote it. And now it has its own life. It has found its way to a number of truly spectacular and insightful people I’ve been lucky to meet because they took a chance on it and picked it up. And think of it! There are people who might be—right this very minute!—reading my book. What a profound magic. I am so happy and so grateful every time someone reads my words.
So, let me say as I sit here at my kitchen table: thank you. I’m really glad you’re here, reading my writing, witnessing me.
With love from my kitchen table,
Kaia