A friend forwarded this to me from her copy of
Slightly Foxed Quarterly:
The novelist Sarah Harrison ... feels all those reviews and publishers' blurbs [in the now-imminent run-up-to-Christmas launches] need some decoding. Her brief guide tickled us, so we thought we'd pass it on:
Enchanting: there's a dog in it
Heart-warming: a dog and a child
Heart-rending: they die
Thoughtful: tedious
Thought-provoking: tedious and hectoring
Haunting: set in the past
Exotic: set abroad
Prize-winning: set in India
Perceptive: set in NW3
Epic: editor cowed by writer's reputation
From the pen of a master: same old same old
In the tradition of: shamelessly derivative
Provocative: irritating
Spare and taut: under-researched
Richly detailed: over-researched