Changing My Mind

The film-review section draws the most consistent complaints, and even a critic agreed, calling it the part where “the weakest are the film reviews, some little more than capsules”, padding out the back of the book. The literary-criticism essays on Forster and Kafka draw fire for being showy and theory-heavy, dense enough that one reader gave up partway through the opening Reading section. A sharper 2-star complaint reads Smith’s range as insecurity rather than confidence, accusing her of “her principle insecure aim. To show us how erudite she is.” The Wallace essay, on his story collection, is the most divisive single piece in the book: some readers call it interminable, circling its own argument without ever landing, while others call it the high point. One reader summed up the surface effect of her prose as “with a surface sparkle to put most household cleaners to shame”.