Reviewing often feels like being pitted against the author in some way, and that dynamic can be a conservative one. Sita Balani: With reviews, there’s an obligation to be clever, to be certain, to gain a kind of mastery over the text. Why not speak to you directly? And then we can put across the flavour of our everyday conversation. But this novel sparks so many thoughts that I have discussed with you (and others) in different contexts. Jay Bernard: Whenever I am asked to write about something – usually because I share some social category with the author, rather than an aesthetic or political affinity – I find myself reaching to become something I am not, some kind of singular authority. Against Mastery: A Dialogue on Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘The Water Dancer’
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