I’m guessing a teacher or professor can assign a book and ask questions about it in class or on a test to determine whether students actually read the material. Unfortunately, a teacher can do this and still get duped because students often learn to answer in generalities, maybe even formulating summaries based on context clues from the surrounding class discussion. I know students do this not only because I’m a teacher but also because I’ve done it as a student.

But imagine if the book’s author stepped into the room and started asking the questions. I can promise you he wouldn’t be so easily duped.

By contrast, the author knows the inner logic of the work better than anyone else—the themes, the turns of thought, the intentional elements, the moments that simply cannot be paraphrased because they require precise items from the characters’ lives and details from the story’s landscape. The teacher might have a grasp of it. But the author created and knows it. It is of and from him.

With that in mind, and as I read reviews and participate in interviews, I must confess that an author always knows when an interviewer or reviewer has actually read the book. In a sense, the author is not necessarily looking for information, but rather a spirit of encounter—of an immersion in the world he has created.

And so again, what inevitably emerges from a review or interview reveals whether someone has inhabited the text, absorbing what’s there (even if it isn’t entirely understood), or has merely skimmed its surface. Unfortunately, both possibilities occur in the world of books. Literary inhabitants and skimmers labor side by side to detail a book’s good or bad qualities for others.

So far, the reviews for “Ashes to Ashes” have all been complimentary. I’m glad for that. Still, I should add that not all have come from genuine encounters. Some are the work of skimmers. How do I know? Because the author always knows.