The Whole Point of Criticism

WILLIAM GIRALDI’S recent thrashing of Alix Ohlin’s first two novels in the New York Times caused more than a small stir in the American literati. Among other things, Giraldi panned Ohlin’s weak plots and “appalling lack of register.” “Mitch’s heart sang,” Giraldi writes, quoting a few choice phrases from Inside, and then Mitch’s “heart sank”; poor Mitch “felt his heart cracking like ice cubes in warm water.” Annie “had touched Grace’s heart” but had also “gotten under her skin.” Grace feels “marooned on her own private island” and then “her nerves were singing.” In just 13 pages you will be asked to endure eyes “fluttering,” then “shining,” then “fluttering” again. Mitch’s girlfriend is “brilliantly smart”—imagine for a second the special brand of languor required to connect those two terms—and also blows her nose “goose-honkingly hard.”