This post was written by Friday blogger Annie Reid.
Some browsing the other day on Amazon.com led me to the work of a former teacher of mine, Rebecca Brown, author of works such as The Terrible Girls, Gifts of the Body and The End of Youth. Rebecca’s writing is sort of like if Samuel Beckett, Shirley Jackson and Monique Witting had a bouncing baby grrrl. Almost militantly minimalist in language, with a surrealistic core, and decidedly queer. Unfortunately for Rebecca Brown, the queer avant-garde writer, there is an evangelical Christian writer named Rebecca Brown, who writes books like He Came to Set the Captives Free. This book is about how Satan married a pal of the authors to ensnare her. (Apparently he wore a white tuxedo and rented a Presbyterian church for the event.) She’s got some sort of connection to Chick Publications (shudder, shudder).
Alas, the search machine treats them as the same person. This leads to a number of “customer reviews” like this:
*one star* I have not read this, but it sounds like a lesbian writer which is a bit confusing. It is not the same christian writer, just in case you were as confused as I was. Dr Rebecca Brown and Rebecca Brown are 2 different people. Just another stupid scheme and confusing lie from the enemy. Busted!!! Please don’t let satan confuse you and try to discredit what Dr Brown wrote. Investigate everything before you judge.
God Bless
That’s right, this challenging and provocative literary fiction is really just an attempt to confuse you from gettin’ with God. Identity theft, Satan-style. (Who loves you, baby?)
Now this “review” has been up for a long time. I’ve flagged “report this” a few times, but it’s still up there. While I get that indexing authors with the same name differently would be difficult, is it too much to ask that clearly homophobic low ratings from people who haven’t read the book be removed when reported?