David Giles

anyone who reads a fictional work, such as American Dirt, and is annoyed by what they see as its factual inaccuracy or misrepresentation of reality and criticises the book and the author for exploiting or stereotyping people and their real experiences, misses the point that the work is not meant to be a documentary or a report or journalistic. Read the book and by all means criticise the quality of the writing, the characterisation, the pace of the storey etc… but don’t make the mistake of thinking that the book should be a reliable source of factual information. I read American Dirt; it is a pot boiler, in parts very well written in other parts less so, it is well paced, has tense, exciting passages some quite hard to read, it’s well constructed, perhaps the ending was a bit lame but then again not every good story needs a blockbuster finale; overall I enjoyed reading it and it was provocative. But the idea that it faithfully and accurately described reality never crossed my mind.