“She looked at him with her languid brown eyes. She thought about how handsome he was in his younger days with his mahogany brown hair and boyish dimples. It made her heart beat faster at every thought of him…”
Admit it—you’ve read plenty of books like this. I know I have. In some ways, it’s unavoidable. Today, after going on a 5 year fast from modern women novelists, I decided to give one a try. Now I remember why I was convicted to shun female novelists in the first place. Here are a few observations in the form of questions I might ask these authors.
1) Why is it that women novelists have the innate desire to explain details that are either irrelevant or clichéd? Unless your paragraph-long description of someone’s physique is going to come in handy later or reveals a part of their character that we could not otherwise grasp, would it be so difficult to leave some things unsaid?
2) Why must we always know a person’s thoughts or in particular, what the heroine is thinking? We don’t always need the God perspective. There’s always the first person perspective. Can’t dialogue tell us enough?
3) Can you come up with a plot that doesn’t involve a beach-side love story, a tragic past, or a perfect man that can tame the free-spirited woman?
So here is a salute to the women who broke the mold: (one of my favorite authors) Klaran Blixen (aka. Isak Denison), Mary Shelley, Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O’Connor, The Bronte Sisters (even if I didn’t care their works) and women writers of fantasy books: A Wrinkle in Time, and (I’m taking this one on faith) Harry Potter.
A hearty “Hazah” to my favorite authors: Ernest Hemingway, Alexander Solzhenytsen, Alexandre Dumas, C.S. Lewis, Edgar Allen Poe, Fyodor Dovstoevsky, William Golding, Tolkien, and Oscar Wilde.
Comments (12)
I sit here, hunched over my computer in such a way as creates a vertebral subluxation in my C1 and C5 vertebrates. Smiling wistfully I ponder the wondrous rants of the woman I love and her free spirit that could only be tamed by me, on a beach, talking about our tragic past lives.
A salute to you my dearI completely agree with your complaints, I've know several girls who had wrong expectations because of books like that and it really came back to bite them.
Props for having such a great list of good female authors though! (Oh and Madeliene L'engle is the author of the Wrinkle In Time series and yeah she's amazing.)
I have a theory as to why that is, but I fear it will be met with another rant...
Cowboy
Watch television; it numbs the mind much faster and besides, if I need to learn something, I'm sure that the magic talking box will teach it to me...
lol great comments, thanks.
must say, your husband's comment made me chuckle quite a lot... :)
though I heartily agree that the type of novels you describe is generally not worthy of being read at all, I have to object to your generalization that women are the culprits--plenty of men have written trash as well... thinking Gilbert Morris, Louis L'Amour... and there are lots of of quality female novelists out there... you named several of them (though I find it interesting that you included Emily Bronte). I suppose women are more prone to writing thoughtless, mushy stuff... but, on the other hand, I think men are prone to writing thoughtless shoot-em-up stuff... anyhoo... that came out sounding more formal than I meant it to... and now this comment has gotten really long! sorry about that!
hello from Peru! how are things with my friends the Demmes?
I am, personally of the opinion that authors such that you have described need to be hung and their works used as tinder...
On a less dramatic note "Huzzah" for good authors!!
All of these comments have made me smile...and, I'm with you. I tried to read Lori Wick (I'd heard she was a good Christian romance writer), but I just couldn't finish the book. I tried...I really did and it was an easy read, but I just couldn't stand it after a while. Every single sentence told me what someone was thinking AND why they were thinking it. Anyways, as always, thanks for the very interesting posts.
In order to get my friend to read Dorothy Sayers (my favorite female author of all time, though Shirley Jackson and Flannery O'Connor are up there too), I agreed to read a couple books written by Christian women (I won't call them "novels" because there was nothing novel about them). Well, I knew what every character was wearing and eating every day, but as for any real character development, notta. The men had dashing british accents (I was told) but I could never hear it in the Americanized phrases they spoke. (I will admit, though, my tendency as an author is to write what my main character is thinking. I try not to overkill; I know it's a bad habit. But at least every other sentence isn't an italicized thought-bubble).
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=) Sarah
I'm sorry! I didn't mean to say that your comment didn't count...I actually posted my little grump-fest before even realizing there was a comment on the previous one! Thanks! By the way, the above post really resonated with me. I have been quietly and solitarily lamenting the tendency of "Christian" chick-lit wallowing in the swamp of some unbiblical, insipid form of femininity. What a waste. And agreed - cheers to Madeleine L'Engle for breaking the mold. Have you read her book "Walking on Water"? Fabulous, insightful and deliciously imperfect. Oh, and did you notice my own over-abundance of adjectives here! Ha!
Am I the first to point out that you're wearing a wedding veil with a track suit in your profile picture? Very fetching! What good times were had at your wedding - I'm so glad I got to be there!