Relentless

expected to, then they were brilliant.”
    “Every writer now and then makes a fool of himself, dear. What’s unique about you is—you’ve never made a total
ass
of yourself.”
    “I’m working on it.”
    “Listen, sweetheart, I just e-mailed you three major reviews that appeared this morning. Read the one by Shearman Waxx first.”
    I held my breath. Waxx was the senior critic for the nation’s premier newspaper. He was feared, therefore revered. He had not reviewed any of my previous novels.
    Because I didn’t subscribe to that newspaper, I had never read Waxx. Nevertheless, I knew he was the most influential book critic in the country.
    “And?” I asked.
    Olivia said, “Why don’t you read it first, and then we’ll talk.”
    “Uh-oh.”
    “He favors boring minimalism, Cubby. The qualities he dislikes in your work are the very things readers hunger for. So it’s really a selling review.”
    “Uh-oh.”
    “Call me after you’ve read it. And the other two, which are both wonderful. They more than compensate for Waxx.”
    When I turned away from the telephone, Penny was sitting at the table, holding her knife and fork not as if they were dining utensils but as if they were weapons. Having heard my side of the conversation with my editor, she had sensed a threat to her family, and she was as armored for the fight as the Brunhild whom she had once been.
    “What?” she asked.
    “Shearman Waxx reviewed my book.”
    “Is that all?”
    “He didn’t like it.”
    “Who gives a flying”—she glanced at Milo before finishing her question with a nonsense word instead of a vulgarity—“furnal.”
    “What’s a flying furnal?” Milo asked.
    “A kind of squirrel,” I said, fully aware that my gifted son’s intellectual genius lay in fields other than biology.
    Penny said, “I thought the book was terrific, and I’m the most honest critic you’re ever going to have.”
    “Yeah, but a couple hundred thousand people read his reviews.”
    “Nobody reads his reviews but geeky aficionados of snarkiness.”
    “You mean it has wings?” Milo asked.
    I frowned at him. “Does what have wings?”
    “The flying furnal.”
    “No. It has air bladders.”
    “Do yourself a favor,” Penny advised. “Don’t read the review.”
    “If I don’t read it, I won’t know what he said.”
    “Precisely.”
    “What do you mean—air bladders?” Milo asked.
    I said, “Inflatable sacs under its skin.”
    “Has any review, good or bad, ever changed the way you write?” Penny asked.
    “Of course not. I’ve got a spine.”
    “So there’s nothing to be gained from reading this one.”
    Milo said, “It doesn’t fly. What it must do—it must just float.”
    “It can fly,” I insisted.
    “But air bladders, no wings—it’s a squirrel blimp,” Milo said.
    “Blimps fly,” I said. “They have an engine and a big propeller behind the passenger gondola.”
    Milo saw the weakness of my contention: “Squirrels don’t have engines.”
    “No, but once it inflates its bladders, the furnal kicks its hind feet very fast, like a swimmer, and propels itself forward.”
    Lassie remained poker-faced, but I knew that she had not been convinced by my lecture on the biology of the flying furnal.
    Milo wasn’t buying it either. “Mom, he’s doing it again. Dad’s lying.”
    “He’s not lying,” Penny assured him. “He’s exercising the strong and limber imagination of a fine novelist.”
    “Yeah? What’s the difference from lying?”
    As if curious about her mistress’s reply, Lassie leaned forward in her chair and cocked her head toward Penny.
    “Lies hurt people,” Penny explained. “Imagination makes life more fun.”
    “Like right now,” I said, “I’m imagining Shearman Waxx being attacked and killed by a flying furnal with rabies.”
    “Let it go,” Penny advised.
    “I told Olivia I’d call her back after I read the review.”
    “Don’t read it,” Penny warned.
    “I promised Olivia I’d call her.”
    Mouth full of pancake, Penny shook her head ruefully.
    “I’m a big boy,” I said. “This kind of thing doesn’t get to me. I have to read it. But don’t worry—I’ll laugh it off.”
    I returned to my study and switched on the computer.
    Rather than scroll through Olivia’s e-mail on the screen, I printed out her opening comment and the three reviews.
    First, I read the one from
USA Today
, and then the one from the
Washington Post
. They were raves, and they fortified