Since writing My Splendid Concubine was not motivated by sexual fantasies, I responded to “outback’s” biased opinion, and he counterattacked saying my book does not “come up to par with Anchee Min, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Walker, Charles Dickens, Amy Tan, Pearl S. Buck, James Michener, Eudora Welty, Harper Lee, Isabel Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Tom Robbins and so on….”
I’d have to agree. I have never even fantasized that I was equal or better than these authors were.
Outback claimed to have read all of the books by the above authors and thousands more yet he only has two, one-star reviews posted on Amazon (at the time I wrote this post).
Where are all those five-star reviews extolling the virtues of the work he admires?
Outback has a right to “his or her” opinion, but I do not have to agree or stay silent as he indicated when “outback” wrote, “P.S. You may want to grow a thicker skin.”
There are other opinions of My Splendid Concubine that do not agree with “colorado outback” that demonstrate a better understanding of why I wrote the novel.
Since “colorado outback” may argue (if he, she or it ever reads this) I quoted a friend’s biased review to defend my “thin skin”, I will use a review from a nonbiased source — the Midwest Book Review, which has posted almost 60,000 reviews on Amazon and compiled about 200,000 helpful votes compared to “outback’s” two reviews with two helpful votes.
The Midwest Book Review has a policy that if a reviewer does not like a book, he or she is to stop reading and find a book they enjoy. Good thing “colorado outback” doesn’t write reviews here.
The Midwest Book Reviewer wrote of My Splendid Concubine, “Love for ones wives’ sister is typically forbidden by most western religions, but the most successful westerner in Chinese history is faced with this conflict.
“‘My Splendid Concubine’ is the tale of Robert Hart who deals with the matters of his lust and how to deal with them the Chinese way, which so conflict with his upbringing.
“The Taiping Rebellion doesn’t help matters, him making enemies of established and skilled mercenaries in the process of protecting his interest and the women he loves. ‘My Splendid Concubine’ is packed cover to cover with intriguing characters and plot, a must read for historical fiction fans and a fine addition to any collection on the genre.”
To be continued on April 2, 2011 in Part 4 or return to Part 2
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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