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Mudpie for the M.V. TimesNovember 30, 2009 The M.V. Times's first (of two) holiday catalogues was tucked into the paper's Thanksgiving week issue. The Mud ad looks great. Placement is pretty good. On page 3 there's an unsigned book round-up, titled "In Our Words: Books by Island Authors." I made the mistake of skimming it to see if Mud was included. It was. Here's the capsule description: "A novel about life on the Vineyard that includes family discord, romance and threats of murder." Huh? Romance? Is this a reference to Janice's attempts to fix her closeted gay brother up with her best friend? I didn't think the semi-sordid hotel sex scene in chapter 11 constituted "romance," but maybe I was wrong. True, Meg the real estate agent is romantic to the core: she dearly hopes that sleeping with her more distinguished clients will deliver her from her less-than-satisfactory life. But that's a subplot, and the novel's take on what Meg is up to is somewhat skeptical, to say the least. Mud's background includes plenty of family discord -- though "discord" seems an understatement for the violence that both Janice and Alice managed to escape. In the novel itself? What gets Jay in trouble is his determined attempt to avoid family discord by not coming out. And "threats of murder"? Wayne -- c'mon, we all know Wayne was the shooter in the state forest, don't we? -- tried to kill Jay before the story starts, but now he's lowered his expectations: he merely wants to ruin Jay's life. OK, at this point I shouldn't expect anything from the features editor of the Martha's Vineyard Times. Last fall she assigned the book to an inexperienced reviewer who didn't know much about Martha's Vineyard; the result was a mediocre, though fairly positive, review that she buried in the back of the features section, rather than placing it on page 2, where most book reviews appear. Hardly anyone even saw it. In last year's holiday round-up, Mud was described as a novel about the year-round Vineyard "from a lesbian perspective." I wasn't the only reader perplexed by this, but all was revealed several months later when I learned that the writer of the article hadn't read the book. She did know that I was a lesbian -- QED, the novel must be from a lesbian perspective. Whatever that means. But the other blurbs -- there are 14 in all -- give some evidence that the anonymous writer has read, if not the books, at least the jacket copy. Why not mine (the author whined)? Why didn't the blurb say something about what the book is about? "In which a reporter chases a scoop and misses the story" would do nicely, or perhaps "In which a social worker hides in the closet and an artist locks herself out of her studio." No matter how unfairly a newspaper treats an author's book, calling attention to it is a lose-lose proposition. There's no way for the author to look anything but bad. But I've been biting my tongue so long that my tongue is bitten almost all the way through. In other words, I'm thinking about it. "When in doubt, don't" is my mantra, though, and as long as I've got doubts, I won't.
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