“fiction should be void of the authors voice/opinion”

that's a baffling statement and if I saw that in a review I would just stop reading that review and make a mental note never to read a review by that person again

That’s what I thought too the first few times I saw it, but now I keep seeing it in like all of the 1-2 star reviews I see that are from the average reader. I am an average reader I think so I try to get their POVs over reviewers but there seems to be some disconnect in the lower ratings

if that's like just rando users of goodreads or something vs verified reviewers it kind of makes sense, there's no bar for quality for use of the platform. At least statements like those you quoted make it pretty easy to disregard useless reviews

Not sure how you'd know if the POV was influenced by the author or not unless you really followed the author in real life and knew their thoughts/opinions...

Are they perhaps talking about metafictional books and metafictional elements in books? In other words, novels that know that they are novels and comment on that in the text? I personally enjoy those but can understand why others night find it annoying.

The specific claim you're reacting to is ... puzzling. I'm not sure that there's a fiction book in existence that doesn't have the author's voice and opinion in it. I suppose ghost-written books in the style of another author? But I suspect that's not what is meant.

Here's a stab at what this criticism actually means: the author is making it very clear what they think and narrowing the potential meaning of their work in the reader's mind. Very much a stylistic choice. Some writers prefer to leave their work open-ended and don't worry about interpretation. Some writers actively encourage readers to interpret in unusual ways. Others have very definite designs embedded in their work; some interpretations are objectively wrong.

A lot of people don't like the latter kind of author. I'm not sure why. I suppose because some readers get frustrated if they have ideas about a book, then find that their ideas were wrong and that they misunderstood the book. There's also a belief floating around that books never have incorrect interpretations, which makes no sense to me. But people believe it.

As for a fiction book with so much of the author's voice as to be obnoxious at times? Ayn Rand, obviously. I actually like her work a lot, but she sometimes forgets that her characters are characters and starts writing monologues in her own voice, instead of the characters' voices. At times she does this with characters who are ostensibly having a conversation, but the two sides of the conversation bleed together and you can't tell who's speaking anymore because their voices lose all differentiation.

I mean I completely agree there is not to my knowledge a book where the author (intentionally or unintentionally) doesn’t insert at least part of their own POV. Which is why it’s been puzzling to me as well to see this critique on so many books lately! I was wondering if I had been missing something in the general book community as of late. It seems though these may just be people from a loud minority of book people!

No they are typically speaking about opinions sometimes political but sometimes not. One of the most recent ones was in response to The Poppy Wars by R. F. Kuang in which someone commented that the authors commenting on racism in the fictional world was putting in their own opinions and said I quote “real fiction authors used to write without inserting their opinions on every page” which is the review that prompted my post here but certainly wasn’t the first time I have seen this criticism as of late.

Most books you read are written by an authors opinion or thought process. Unless someone is stemming from the ideology of sexual orientation or political viewpoints. There are so many examples of writers putting things in their books that they themselves don't agree with also, though, such as violence, rape,murder, incest. I think if someone can't handle reading an adult fiction book and they want to write negative reviews of authors being too opinionated, then they should just stick to the picture books in the kids section.

I mean I think some books it can be very clear about an authors stance based on the material. Though I guess technically we can never be 100% sure about that, I think it’s fair to make some educated guesses that an author that writes a historical fiction book about the civil rights movement in America and writes those things in a favorable light most likely agrees with the civil rights movements beliefs.

I do think sometimes it is harder to tell the authors opinions and like you said unless you follow them on social media or know them in real life we will never 100% know for sure

> "real fiction authors used to write without inserting their opinions on every page"

Tell me you never developed critical literacy skills without telling me you never developed critical literacy skills.

Maybe 'voice' has taken on a new meaning fairly recently, but to me it's nothing like 'opinion',

It's much like 'tone' & is determined partly if not mostly by the author's diction (choice of words), phrasing and the like & not related at all to opinion. Saying that a narrator has a strong voice is praise. Nothing to do with opinion. In fiction voice is probably most striking in 1st-person narratives.

Author's opinions are okay if the writer is so skilful that they aren't apparent. Animalia by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo is an unusually powerful book about a few generations of farming family that I never suspected was written as a protest against mistreatment of animals, but Ayn Rand and Scarlett Thomas don't write well enough to use their advocacy of selfishness or homeopathy as anything but blunt objects.

As a teen I DNF the maximum ride series because Patterson got up on his global warming soapbox and derailed the plot something awful. I’m all for saving the environment, but in those books it just got egregious.

Fiction being devoid of the authors point of view is simply silly as every fiction story is going to have a point of view as it SHOULD.

Occasionally I will run into what I'd say is "too much" which means that the message of the story completely overtakes the story/or that it's so blunt and in your face that it's like...did you want the reader to think at all? Did you want to push the reader to challenge anything? And btw, this happens often with books whose message I actually agree with! I read a book recently where I completely agreed with the message, but it was just so...stated without any way for the reader to think that it felt hollow.

“Death of the author” is in vogue in modern criticism. It’s actually bullshit, your instincts are correct. It’s not possible to create art without having the artist present and imbued in the result, and this is what we love about it - inhabiting the experiences and perspectives and unique imagination of someone else.

I don't mind as long as it's not over done. There are several authors (Clive Cussler & John Ringo come to mind) who are constantly pushing their pet conspiracy theories (Cussler) and hard right politics (Ringo), which pull me right out of the story.

All books, fiction or not, are going to have some sort of authorial perspective that shapes the work. It's going to help determine what is emphasized, if characters will be rewarded or punished for behavior that may be moral but be socially unacceptable (or vice versa), etc

That said I was SO FRUSTRATED with The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake. In the first 100 pages, I learned that she thought bangs/fringe looked stupid. It was covered multiple times from multiple POV characters. It absolutely drove me up the wall- I knew the author's opinion on a hairstyle better than I knew most of the characters' opinions on anything. That, I feel, was too much.

This doesn't sound like literary criticism, but more like political commentary by people who don't like the views of the authors.

Like when right-wingers got upset about a black stormtrooper or a black character in Star Trek and suddenly "science fiction shouldn't push political messages".

More and more, people seem unable to deal with disagreement or conflict. Some readers don't get that it's impossible for any human being to write an entirely "neutral" book that doesn't reflect author voice or opinion in some shape or form, even if subtle. Interestingly, those readers often only seem to complain when the author's opinion or voice suggests a belief in something that the reader feels strongly opposed to. Then it becomes "the author pushing their agenda". If you're going to dislike a book for an opinion or issue you disagree with and that an author seems to be framing positively, to me the more logical response is just to say that plainly, instead of acting like an author should hide their opinion/belief.

There are some books where it can feel like an author is beating you over the head with an idea, but to me that has more to do with the writing than the expression of that idea.

>she sometimes forgets that her characters are characters and starts writing monologues in her own voice

This is key for me. If there's a character whose only role is to declare the view of the author, I find it really boring and annoying. I DNF'ed The Island by Aldous Huxley because of this.

It's not what you say but how you say it.

In Moby Dick, Melville's perspective and romanticism of the ancient legends of antiquity and the industry of whaling is beautifully articulated and expressed in masterful prose.

Now I am reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe is the author and instead of speaking through a character she comes through as the third person narrator. Historical importance aside, her interjections, jarringly centered around race, distract from character development and realism of the story.

It’s probably one of those generic pieces of advice that’s too broad. For instance, Ayn Rand interrupting Atlas Shrugged to deliver a 32 page treatise on her philosophy is insufferable in many eyes including my own (I still remember getting 4 pages in to the info dump spiel and starting to search for the end quote), but some readers are there for that.

A lot of times authors pomposity and interruption of a fictional narrative can be distracting and take you out of the story, sometimes not. The real rule is do things well, and serve the audience you want to speak to.