About Robert Adams
Each year, as many as 20,000 people attended sold-out lectures in Montreal and Toronto to hear Adams talk about contemporary novels. Each talk focused on one book – “The Farming of Bones” by Edwidge Danticat, “American Pastoral” by Philip Roth or “A Fine Balance” by Rohinton Mistry, to name a few. The talks made him something of a TV star. Several performances were taped and are broadcast on TVO, the Canadian version of PBS, and on BookTelevision, a Canadian cable station devoted to books and authors. Publishers and booksellers detected a surge in sales of 3,000 or more copies when he picked a book to review. They called the phenomenon “the Adams effect.” Canadian newspapers and magazines chimed in with praise. Reviewers credited him with reviving the tradition of evening-length talks in the mode of Dickens and Twain, and with single-handedly creating an artistic genre. “Robert Adams has invented a new art form, the book review as performance,” according to NOW Magazine.