Melinda Harvey replies:

W.H. Chong accuses me of thinking there is ‘a narrow path to making a correct fiction for our times’. Might I suggest, as politely as possible, that his letter discloses his own constrictive view that there is only one way to write a review – that is, with feeling?

There are many ways of writing a good novel (yes, I believe that), and while there might not be quite as many ways of writing a good review, there are still plenty. That Questions of Travel is a novel of elegant expression and intelligent observation prompts no dissent from me, and this should not surprise even the correspondent, who has himself given me a tick for passing these particular taste tests. The mistake I made, it seems, was to suggest that the novel’s accomplishments go beyond these things, which can be understood once the contexts of the author’s previous reception and the Australian literary tradition are taken into account.

We academics have a reputation for being pleasure-poopers, unable to give ourselves over to affect and even worse at articulating it. But if ‘academia’ means not only vibrating to a novel but, where one feels one can, situating it in a writer’s career to date and identifying its influences and innovations, then I wish more of my colleagues were reviewers. The review is a site of appreciation, yes, but appreciation need not look like luxuriation and gush – it can look like analysis, too.