Her bad review of a book on her husband, Amazon boss Jeff, is the latest example of literary support between spouses. In the age of the 'slagosphere', such interventions could become de rigueur
Love is … Mackenzie Bezos has critiqued her husband Jeff's critical biographer. Photograph: Evan Agostini/AP
MacKenzie Bezos's scathing one-star Amazon review of a book about her husband, the site's billionaire boss Jeff Bezos, suggests that online spousal supportiveness may soon become a loving duty, not just the crazy spasm of rage or embarrassing outpouring of affection that – as reactions on social media testify – it's currently seen as. Mrs Bezos, who as a novelist has won a National Book Award (in 2006, for The Testing of Luther Albright), took Brad Stone's The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon to task for, in effect, trespassing on her territory, using techniques that "stretch the boundaries of non-fiction" and result in "way too many inaccuracies" – as in its claim that her husband's reading of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day played a role in his setting up Amazon (he only read it afterwards, she wrote).
MacKenzie Bezos's intervention, however, was scholarly and measured (key sign: no swear words) by the usual standards of pro-spouse commentary, as recently exemplified by the rock star Amanda Palmer's "review" on her blog of her husband Neil Gaiman's latest novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. She began by hailing it as "absolutely fucking amazing", advanced a theory that both of them throw personal ingredients into the "art blender" but with different dial settings (helpfully illustrated), and chattily detailed aspects of their marriage ("it's impossible to write a blog about his new book without talking about us").
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MacKenzie Bezos's intervention, however, was scholarly and measured (key sign: no swear words) by the usual standards of pro-spouse commentary, as recently exemplified by the rock star Amanda Palmer's "review" on her blog of her husband Neil Gaiman's latest novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. She began by hailing it as "absolutely fucking amazing", advanced a theory that both of them throw personal ingredients into the "art blender" but with different dial settings (helpfully illustrated), and chattily detailed aspects of their marriage ("it's impossible to write a blog about his new book without talking about us").
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