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| Spoiler alert: this article says why Terry Pratchett review didn’t have a warning | Spoiler alert: this article says why Terry Pratchett review didn’t have a warning |
| (about 4 hours later) | |
| Readers hate spoilers, and one of the sacred duties of the literary editor is to make sure they don’t happen – or if they do, that they’re signalled with a spoiler alert. The question of what constitutes a spoiler is not straightforward, though, as demonstrated last week by AS Byatt’s magisterial review of Terry Pratchett’s final Discworld novel, The Shepherd’s Crown. | Readers hate spoilers, and one of the sacred duties of the literary editor is to make sure they don’t happen – or if they do, that they’re signalled with a spoiler alert. The question of what constitutes a spoiler is not straightforward, though, as demonstrated last week by AS Byatt’s magisterial review of Terry Pratchett’s final Discworld novel, The Shepherd’s Crown. |
| Published in print in last Saturday’s Review, it went up online at a minute past midnight on Thursday to reflect the drama of the novel’s publication. In the latest example of witching-hour publishing – a tradition that used to be reserved for the latest Harry Potter – fans queued up in fancy dress as bookshops across the UK opened at midnight to sell the novel to them. An hour later, back on the Guardian books website, the first complaint came in, and by mid-morning they were arriving thick and fast. | Published in print in last Saturday’s Review, it went up online at a minute past midnight on Thursday to reflect the drama of the novel’s publication. In the latest example of witching-hour publishing – a tradition that used to be reserved for the latest Harry Potter – fans queued up in fancy dress as bookshops across the UK opened at midnight to sell the novel to them. An hour later, back on the Guardian books website, the first complaint came in, and by mid-morning they were arriving thick and fast. |
| The spoiler was in the first paragraph of the review and the second chapter of the novel. It concerned the death of a favourite character from previous Discworld novels, whose name I won’t reveal for fear of causing further offence. Pratchett dedicated the novel to this character and her death provides the plot with its premise. One of those who wrote in to complain was Keith Lutener, who asked: “Why not [just] mention that the book deals with the witches and death? Why go off on a tangent about one of the most beloved characters. It just doesn’t make sense.” | |
| Lutener cited a review in the Telegraph that had avoided the spoiler, which raises an interesting point about different types of review. Byatt’s was a 1,400-word critique, reflecting our belief in the stature of the book. It analysed the novel in the context of Terry Pratchett’s whole oeuvre, tracing the development of Discworld and its characters through its 41 incarnations. Outside the specialist press, fiction reviews are rarely more than half this length, allowing them to be briskly allusive, as was the second review to which Lutener referred. Length defines the tradition of criticism to which reviews belong. | Lutener cited a review in the Telegraph that had avoided the spoiler, which raises an interesting point about different types of review. Byatt’s was a 1,400-word critique, reflecting our belief in the stature of the book. It analysed the novel in the context of Terry Pratchett’s whole oeuvre, tracing the development of Discworld and its characters through its 41 incarnations. Outside the specialist press, fiction reviews are rarely more than half this length, allowing them to be briskly allusive, as was the second review to which Lutener referred. Length defines the tradition of criticism to which reviews belong. |
| Lutener made a second point which gave me pause for thought: “A simple bit of text saying ‘spoilers below’ would have meant that I could read it another time, yet you let this writer ruin it for the readers.” | Lutener made a second point which gave me pause for thought: “A simple bit of text saying ‘spoilers below’ would have meant that I could read it another time, yet you let this writer ruin it for the readers.” |
| A similar issue came up in relation to Karen Joy Fowler’s 2013 bestseller We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, in which the identity of one of two central “characters” is not revealed until page 77. Many reviewers – and Fowler herself – blithely spoiled the reveal, causing a Twitter storm. One of the most interesting views came from the novelist Tim Relf. “Reckon if it’s less than a quarter of the way into the book it’s fine to reveal,” he tweeted. | |
| Nevertheless, in the light of the fuss last week, we deliberated at length on the books desk as to whether we should add a spoiler alert. In the end we decided not to. First, given that the death of Pratchett’s character happened very near the start, Byatt’s review certainly passed the Relf test: this was not like revealing whodunnit in the latest James Patterson thriller. | |
| Related: The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett review – the much-loved author’s last Discworld novel | Related: The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett review – the much-loved author’s last Discworld novel |
| Second, The Shepherd’s Crown shared the fiction section last week with five other reviews, all of which described the content of novels. If we added an alert to one review, what about the others? Readers have different sensitivities, and who is to say which details may spoil a book for any one of them? A vision of the future yawned into view in which every review had to carry an ugly spoiler alert. | Second, The Shepherd’s Crown shared the fiction section last week with five other reviews, all of which described the content of novels. If we added an alert to one review, what about the others? Readers have different sensitivities, and who is to say which details may spoil a book for any one of them? A vision of the future yawned into view in which every review had to carry an ugly spoiler alert. |
| While accepting that there is a judgment call involved in this, I was heartened by the range of reactions in the comment thread, and particularly by the succinct defence offered by online commenter ClaireDB: “If people wanted to avoid a spoiler, they should have looked at the title of the article – it’s a review, for goodness sake! A book review is defined as ‘a form of literary criticism in which a book is analysed based on content, style, and merit’. Of course it’s going to give a plot summary – that’s part of the meaning of the word.” | While accepting that there is a judgment call involved in this, I was heartened by the range of reactions in the comment thread, and particularly by the succinct defence offered by online commenter ClaireDB: “If people wanted to avoid a spoiler, they should have looked at the title of the article – it’s a review, for goodness sake! A book review is defined as ‘a form of literary criticism in which a book is analysed based on content, style, and merit’. Of course it’s going to give a plot summary – that’s part of the meaning of the word.” |
| While we will continue to edit as carefully and tactfully as we can, we won’t be carpeting the pages with spoiler alerts any time soon. | While we will continue to edit as carefully and tactfully as we can, we won’t be carpeting the pages with spoiler alerts any time soon. |
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