In America, the debate over whether newspapers have a right to kill negative book reviews in order not to offend readers and authors has been raging in recent weeks. Meanwhile, in the UK, book reviewers regularly take great delight in savaging not only the works of famous authors, but the authors themselves. (Can you imagine an American review comparing a novel to “catching your favourite uncle masturbating in the school yard,” as a British review of Martin Amis’s latest recently did?) The British approach to literary criticism might be exhausting, says Kate Taylor, but it’s exhilirating, too, and vastly preferable to the vague disinterest favored by North American critics.