He said that about a non-fiction book by her, an essay about a school reading realist Polish novel from XIX century. In Poland, being a good fiction writer is correlated with being a good literary critic as much as in any other country.

DYPOtBotD on the other hand is pretty much a whodunit, as such there is a certain threshold to impress book club readers, I guess

Funny how famous writers often seem to be each other’s harshest critics. Was this in reference to any particular book of hers? I read Drive Your Plow and it seemed like fairly standard mystery noir fiction, certainly nothing to write a polemic about

Flights is a great piece of writing though. Definitely not for the Lem crowd, but I guess there are weirdos like myself who like both.