To recap, Jonathan Franzen published a new book this summer and landed not only 2 NYT book reviews but the cover of Time as well. Then Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult got lots of press for protesting.
My take? I am firmly on their side. My reaction to seeing the cover, even before the #franzenfreude started, was "WTF, why does this dude get the cover of Time??".
I'm pretty tired of literary fiction by men getting all the attention. Case in point: nearly every book blog I read this summer gushed about One Day
by David Nicholls. I got very tired of the pandering, and eventually angry, because I read it and HATED it. I thought the characters, particularly the male protagonist, were downright unlikeable. And other than a few comic scenes, the novel was dull, dull, dull - with a total cop-out of an ending. But everyone else was giving him the blog equivalent of a blow job.Frankly, One Day is a pale imitation of a women's fiction novel, written by a man. It's a quasi-romance. It tries to get into the characters' heads. And in my opinion failed miserably. (I'll be honest - I'm not a big fan of Nick Hornby, either.)
And you know damn well that if One Day had been written by a woman... it would NEVER have gotten so much attention. I think that's what makes me the maddest.
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is the story of Ro, an abused wife who finally makes a break for it. What's really interesting is that the character that Jackson has created does not seem at all to be the type of woman who would put up with abuse. She's really headstrong, witty, and you get the feeling she could bust anyone's balls at a moment's notice (at least, before she got married, she was strong). She also happens to be in love with her hateful husband, despite the abuse. When a psychic tells her that she's going to die at his hand unless she kills him first, she finally lets the "old" Rose Mae out.
has totally renewed my faith in women's fiction (British women's fic to be specific!) I've read several of her chick lit novels before, but they were from the early 2000s - to be honest I hadn't even realized she was still writing. Turns out, she just hasn't been published in the US for a while. Thanks, Bantam, for bringing her back to us!
, was just published this month in trade paperback, so even though it’s new it won’t be a hassle to obtain for groups. Sarah, an ad exec, is fired from her job when she forwards an inappropriate email to her entire firm. She decides to leave the rat race of New York to stay with her sister in Houston for a while. Her sister, Mackie, has been trying unsuccessfully to have a baby. Sarah decides that what the heck, she’s not working anyway, she’ll be the surrogate! While of course, wackiness ensues… this is also a story with real heart and depth."
(due out in June 2010) has the same sense of whimsical fantasy - only this time instead of going back in time, we get to take a look forward. Tilly actually loves her seemingly perfect life, until she realizes it’s not so perfect after all. When her husband leaves her to follow his basketball-coaching bliss, Tilly stumbles through life until a psychic pal grants her the gift of clarity - the ability to flash forward into the future and see where life is going to take her. Again, Scotch handles a whimsical premise that could be downright silly in another writer’s hands and manages to make it sound perfectly reasonable and possible. Her down to earth characters and snappy sense of humor are a real treat, and readers will enjoy discussing Tilly’s fate."