Last week, I received four reviews for Blue Tide Rising, three good, one bad. And guess which one I spent ages agonising over, unpicking, and generally over-analysing?

The poor review wasn’t posted on the review website for which it was intended. It was emailed with the proviso ‘she (the reviewer) is always honest’. It began ‘the first few pages are ‘gritty’ and do not make pleasant reading…’ and went on to give a thoroughly downbeat outline of the story, with undercurrents of disapproval throughout, without actually saying why the reviewer didn’t like it.

I sensed there was more to this than what was actually said so I went back to the reviewer to delve a little deeper. Turns out they were put off by ‘the language’. This, apparently, flavoured their review of the whole book, leaving them with nothing positive to say about it.

This piece of criticism threw me into a paroxysm of self doubt. Had I produced something offensive? A thing of filth, not fit to be read in polite society or foisted on an unsuspecting public?

It’s true that a character in Chapter Two swears three times in quick succession, but profanity in the rest of the novel is actually fairly sparse. Amy, the main character, swears occasionally. Later on in the book another character is quite sweary. But that’s life, isn’t it?

Not able to let this drop, I went back over my manuscript and ran a count on the number of times the ‘F’ word makes an appearance. The answer is 42, which out of a total word count of 80,421 words, is just 0.05%. This, according to Jericho Writers ‘fuckety index’ puts it at the low end of ‘normal for any gritty genre’ – and almost in the ‘unsweary’ category.

And the swearing isn’t gratuitous. It’s there for a purpose, to create atmosphere, to enrich the setting, to give an idea of character and to keep it real.

It occurred to me, if this group of reviewers doesn’t like swearing, it must rule out a fair proportion of contemporary – and not so contemporary – literature. True, Trainspotting’s probably not their cup of tea, but what of Larkin’s ‘This be the Verse’ J D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Chaucer’s The Millers’ Tale, or anything by Martin Amis or Caitlin Moran? Presumably, they wouldn’t watch an episode of Fleabag either.

A writer’s job is to create authenticity. Blue Tide Rising starts off in a gritty urban setting. Amy has washed up in a run-down part of Manchester surrounded by dysfunction. Her small-time dealer neighbour swears a lot. He would. To curtail his language would be wrong.

How swearing helps

Swearing in fiction serves valid purposes. It adds shock value. It makes the setting real. It can signal a change in mood or a turning point. It creates tension. It can also be funny – think Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It.

I grew up in a house where swearing was taboo. You just didn’t do it. The consequences would be unthinkable. But when I entered the outside world, I discovered people swear. Even at Catholic primary school; at secondary school; at sixth form – especially at sixth form – we all swore with bravado. This trend continued in the work place. My first editor peppered his sentences with a liberal sprikling of profanities. And coming from a house where no-one swore, I found all this rather refreshing.

Some of my upbringing stayed with me though, and when the book came out, I did worry about certain people (mostly family members) reading it, in case of sensitivities to the 42 uses of the F-word. Some readers, I felt, might not get beyond Chapter Two. I was wrong, however, as those I thought might be offended lapped it up and loved it.

I’m told there are armies of US reviewers who jump on profanity in books and knock off stars in their review ratings when it appears. And in 2014 Vladimir Putin passed a law which decreed that any book containing ‘foul language’ must be sold in a sealed pack and marked with an obscenity warning. In the UK, however, we’re usually ok with swearing.

Perhaps getting a critical review based solely on ‘offputting language’ is no bad thing for an author. Perhaps it could even be a right of passage. I wish, though, that this reviewer had been honest. If they’d said they hated the book because of the swearing, at least there would have been something to defend. Some passion. Some opinion.

Hey ho. I’ve spent too long unpicking this one and it’s time to move on, but before I do, here’s one of the good reviews I received that same week. From Nottingham Unesco City of Literature, no less:

A debut novel that deftly steps between gritty reality and magic realism with an agility that many more seasoned writers would envy, this is a book that has a beating heart within its fascinating central character.

Matt Turpin, Nottingham City of Literature

Do you think swearing is ok in fiction or does it put you off? I’d love to hear your views on this. If you have opinions on the matter, please share them in the comments below!