Rounding Error
He found himself reading the words hungrily. An essay by Andrew Bertaina.
He knew he shouldn’t ever read his Goodreads reviews. This was common knowledge among authors far more famous and beloved than he was. Once, there had been a dispute because a writer had been incensed that their book had been rated as 4.5 out of 5 stars. It was embarrassing for the author who’d made such a big deal out of it, but the author had doubled down, had defended their right to trash someone for giving their book 4.5 out of 5 stars. In fact, the author pointed out that the rating system didn’t allow for half stars, which meant that even though the reader had mentioned that they felt the book deserved 4.5 stars, they’d awarded 4/5 on the site, which the author said was abominable, that it was the sort of thing that drove them crazy, having their life’s work receive only 4/5 stars. Intuitively, he knew where the famous author was coming from. It was hard to have your work judged. During workshops in graduate school, his cheeks had always burned when his story was being discussed, it almost pained him. And he’d never gotten back into the habit of sharing his work after leaving school because he just couldn’t bear to hear it talked of as though he wasn’t there. He couldn’t bear the thought of someone awarding his life’s work, God forbid, 3/5 stars. So, he’d stopped receiving feedback and though he knew it meant his stories were a little rougher around the edges, it was really the only way for him to continue writing, to imagine his audience didn’t exist at all. It barely did.
So why then, he asked himself, had he read reviews of his book, especially when he’d seen that someone had finally rated it below five stars? His overall average on Goodreads, a site every author he knew detested, was now 4.76. Instead of feeling a hot flash of indignation, he found himself scrolling down to read the review of the person who’d given his book 3 stars, well below the 4 to 4.5 stars that the famous author had melted down about. And as he scrolled down, his attention, which was shoddy and often why he barely wrote anything, narrowed.
He found himself reading the words hungrily. For here was a non-ideal reader, someone who didn’t like his stories, his lyricism, his homage stories to Borges, Calvino, July. In fact, as the reviewer went on, he said the very thing the writer knew in his heart to be true. The reviewer said he wasn’t surprised the book only had five-star reviews, and that it was common for a smaller press book to only be reviewed and starred by people who knew and liked the writer.
And he knew the reviewer was speaking the truth, that all the five-star reviews were people who knew the writer, in person or online, who were predisposed to like his stories, to leave a positive review. Now he was finally breaking through that veil. Someone was reading his book for the very first time, a stranger. Someone who had no intentions toward him at all, good or ill. He was just a reader, and isn’t that what every writer really wanted? Not a mother or a good friend to like their book, but a stranger, someone they didn’t know at all, who briefly picked up their book and encountered their mind.
He read the three-star review again, committing the words to his memory. It was the happiest he’d been since his book was published.
Andrew Bertaina is the author of the short story collection One Person Away From You (2021), which won the Moon City Short Fiction Award, and the essay collection, The Body is a Temporary Gathering Place (Autofocus, 2024). His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Witness Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Orion, and The Best American Poetry. He has an MFA from American University in Washington, DC. He is currently a Visiting Writer at American University.
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