I can't claim to know the first thing about the recent winner of the Governor General award, or his award-winning children's novel, When Everything Looks like the Movies, beyond the excerpt's Barbara Kay has chosen to attack in her book review entitled Wasted tax dollars on a values-void novel. Harsh.
I'm not going to lie: I didn't particularly like what I read. Not Raziel Ried or Barbara Kay's words. Perhaps this novel is a tad gimmicky in it's desperation for shock-value, but that is not Kay's issue. Read her article's title again: Values-void. Novel.
So, she admits it: she's pissed off because Ried's work ignores society's conventional boundaries. She's not arguing against the value of piece itself. What Kay doesn't seem to get is that writing is about breaking rules. The question of whether or not this piece is actually good writing is yet to be dissected, but I think I'll leave that opinion up to me. (Now that I'm intrigued enough to pick up my own copy. Cheers Barbara!)