Dear O'Abby: What does this mean?

 Dear O'Abby,

I've been querying a novel and most of the rejections I've received have been pretty generic, even from agents who requested partials or fulls.  Then yesterday, I got a rejection from an agent who had requested a full that said this:

"I love how you’re able to bring such dark, troubling subject matter to life in ways that are humorous or sad, and sometimes both. I’m really impressed by your ability to write fleshed-out, realistic characters. They feel like people rather than caricatures, from the protagonists to minor supporting characters, and your dialogue-writing skills are also spot-on!"

Which obviously had me really excited!  But then she went on to say: 

"I am afraid I will not offer representation. This was a very tough decision as I read this with great excitement, loved the writing and the voice and the story."

What does that mean?  If she loved so much about the book, why did she reject it?

Yours,

Baffled

Dear Baffled,

There are any number of reasons why she may have decided against it, even though she loved it.  Maybe she'd already representing a book with similar themes.  Or someone else in her agency is.  Maybe your book is too like other books already in the market.  Or, it's possible this agent doesn't know any editors who are looking for a book like yours. It's possible that she did like it a lot, but knew there was a lot more work needing to be done to get it ready to submit, and she doesn't have the time to put in to guide you through that.  

But you can't speculate as to why she rejected it if she didn't give you any specific reasons in her email.  You can just spend a few minutes basking in that praise of your writing and move on.  And make sure you keep a note of who this is, because if this book doesn't get you an agent, you will want to query this one with your next book!

My advice would be to keep querying.  You're obviously getting requests, and this agent clearly liked your book a lot, even if she didn't want to represent it.  Not everyone gets feedback like this on their book, so enjoy it and take some confidence from it.  And then send out another batch of queries.

Good luck!  And do let us know how you go in the query trenches.  We'd love to hear your good news when it comes.

X O'Abby