Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

There Is No Hatchet

When a literary blogger singles out your review, essentially badmouthing you under the aegis of "respect," do you fear this is some odd effort to draw you into a needless public brawl? Or do you, like me, assume a mature stance and realize that it's a difference of literary sensibilities? (The Lovely Bones, by the way, didn't have the imprimatur of Updike. And if "an enormous sprig of stephanotis in the accidental shape of Prussia" is "bloated prose," then color me engorged.)