Showing posts with label genre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genre. Show all posts

Wednesday, 18 July 2012

Crime 2012 releases: What's being reviewed?

Last weekend the tally of reviews for newly released literary works was posted on this blog, and the question was posed whether "genre" books should have been included. The response from speculative fiction authors on Twitter was a resounding, "Yes!" Of course "genre" books should be included.
But which genres? And what do we mean by "literary" anyway?

The question is timely because, as author P.A. O'Reilly tweeted yesterday, new prizes - including  The Stella Prize - are more open to "judging the work, not the 'genre'." So how do we identify the literary?
 
According to O'Reilly, literary books "reward a second reading with another layer of meaning". Author Claire Corbett goes further: "A literary book doesn't give you what you demand but what you never knew you wanted." Quality writing has subtext, according to Corbett, including non-fiction; too much writing has no subtext, she says, because such craft takes time.

Is it all a matter of craft and layers of meaning? Or are some genres more likely to be considered literary than others?

Clearly some Speculative Fiction titles have no trouble attracting the attention of major literary awards - Corbett's 2011 release, When We Have Wings, for one, was shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis award, while Meg Mundell's Black Glass was Highly Commended by the judges of the same award.

But what of other genres, such as crime?

When crime writer Peter Temple won the 2010 Miles Franklin Award for his crime novel Truth, an expectation was set up that well-crafted crime novels would attract the attention of literary judges. Last year's inclusion of Kirsten Tranter's psychological suspense novel, The Legacy, and this year's inclusion of Virginia Duigan's The Precipice on the Miles Franklin longlists appear to support this view. Yet PM Newton's 2010 - in my opinion, equally brilliant - The Old School, didn't make the grade. Was it perhaps - being a detective novel - considered too generic?

Which crime novels released in 2012 - including detective, paranormal, YA, historical fiction, crime-romance and nonfiction titles - deserve to be considered "literary" in your view? 

Crime: 2012 releases

The following books released in 2012* and reviewed for the AWW challenge between January and June this year have been divided into subgenres:
  • general/thriller/psychological suspense
  • historical fiction 
  • crime/romance (sometimes referred to as "romantic suspense")
  • crime/paranormal
  • YA/Children's and 
  • True Crime.
*Disclaimer: The release dates on publishers' website don't always accurately reflect the year when the book was first published. If there are any errors, please let me know. EL


Tally: 18 books, 25 reviewers, 43 reviews, 10 publishers.

Publishers: Penguin: 4 books, 10 reviews; Random House: 3 book 7 reviews; ClanDestine Press: 3 books, 3 reviews; HarperCollins: 2 books, 5 reviews; Hachette: 1 book 6 reviews; Pan MacMillan: 1 book, 4 reviews; Pantera Press: 1 book, 3 reviews; Black Opal: 1 book, 1 review; EgmontUSA: 1 book, 1 review; Walker Books: 1 book, 1 review.

General/Thriller/Psychological Suspense

Historical Fiction
Romance
Paranormal
YA/Children's

True Crime

Short Stories
~ ~ ~

Guest author reviews

Of the above authors, Jaye Ford, Katherine Howell, YA Erskine and Helene Young have all reviewed for the challenge (that's why the covers of their recent releases are featured here).

Helene has written multiple reviews, including:
Do you think any of the above books deserves to be regarded as "literary"? Do you know of any other crime books released this year that haven't been reviewed for the challenge so far?

Other crime titles (some not reviewed during January-June period of tally):
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Tuesday, 10 April 2012

'For women, by women': Is romance writing inherently feminist? II

Kat Mayo from Book Thingo blog answered a call on Twitter to extend the discussion on feminism and romance. She writes:

I'm excited about this series of posts because—yay!—discussions around romance.

In Elizabeth's introduction to Louise Cusack's post, In defence of books written by women for women, she asks: In what sense, if any, can [romance books] be considered “feminist”?

Recently, I have leaned in favour of the ‘written for women, by women’ proof of romance’s feminist sensibilities. I particularly love author Jennifer Crusie’s passionate defence of the genre, where she points out that, among other things, ‘romance fiction says that women are primary not supporting characters, equal to men in power, intelligence, and ability.’

But Keziah Hills's tweets (quoted by Elizabeth in the post above) have me re-examining my position that the genre is inherently feminist.

I'm looking forward to more posts—and your comments—on the subject to help me clarify my thinking.

At the moment, I think what I want to say is that the genre, as a whole, tends to be reflective rather than progressive. This is a factor of many things, not the least of which is a publishing model that requires books to have broad appeal.

At the same time, I believe that most romance books have a subversive element that speaks to feminism—usually but not always to do with women’s sexuality or the way in which the heroine negotiates power with the hero—but that genre conventions (such as page count), traditions (such as category lines) or assumptions about reader expectations don't always allow for a full exploration of feminist values in every single book.

In some ways, this is part of the strength of romance books—that they can present stories familiar to many women and overlay them with questions about what we expect or should expect from our families, our partners and ourselves. A great romance book, for me, is familiar yet unpredictable.

I agree with Louise that there's a problem around the perception of romance as a genre—the assumption that all romance writing has less literary worth than other genres or works. I also believe there is a lack of consideration for the reasons why women read in the genre so extensively.

In response to Louise’s post, Marilyn (Anonymous) commented that ‘romances…play into the narrative of a woman's life is all about having the right man to depend on. They do not challenge this dangerous assumption either for individual women or for society as a whole.’

On the surface, this seems fair enough for those who don’t read romance books or who don’t understand why women read so widely and so passionately in the genre. But I challenge this assertion on two fronts.

Released: April 2012
First, this type of narrative does not define the genre. To me, the narrative described assumes something about the happy ending—that it’s a means by which the heroine’s problem is solved. I’d argue that in a well-crafted romance, a credible happy ending is only possible because the heroine and hero are now on an equal emotional footing. As Australian romantic suspense author Brownyn Parry writes, ‘[romance novels] recognise that a real love connects us with what is deepest within ourselves, and that a lasting relationship needs equal partners’. Getting this balance of power right is at the core of most of my favourite romance books.

The narrative described by the comment also assumes something about the reader—that the heroine represents us. Any feminist who has read and enjoyed Twilight would know this cannot be true, and this assumption leads to a profound misunderstanding of romance fiction (note 1). And besides, romance readers read other books, too.

The assumption also ignores the popularity among female readers of romance featuring two men (note 2)—so much so that m/m romance written for women seems to be evolving into a genre separate from gay romance written for men.

But where I think the comment truly missed the point was addressed by the next commenter, Shellyrae. Our emotional response is intrinsic to how readers of romance enjoy our Mills and Boons, our vampires and werewolves, and our reformed Regency rakes. Yes, the story must be written competently, but how the characters’ emotional turmoil speak to my own life is why I go back for more.

You see, romance books often do challenge assumptions about how women should feel or react or enjoy themselves in relationships—with men as well as with friends and family, who may feature as secondary characters with their own subplots and emotional conflicts. As Australian sff romance author Nicole Murphy writes, romance fiction provides ‘stories that speak to the truth of being a woman in this world and the specific struggles and issues that we deal with that men do not.’

And even if one argues that romance fiction is wholly escapist fiction—which, I should stress, is not a position that many romance readers take—I don’t believe that necessarily devalues the genre. Ye olde bodice rippers, some would argue, can provide an emotionally safe way for women to explore rape fantasy. We don’t assume that readers of crime fiction harbour murderous tendencies, so why would we assume that women who love The Flame and the Flower want to be mistaken for a prostitute and raped on a ship? (Note 3)

Paranormal romance—those cruel, befanged undead or those ferociously aggressive and possessive half-animals—provide a palatable way to present ‘shameful’ fantasies, including rape, BDSM, multiple partners and even double-pronged heroes. (And yes, I have that book.)

Finally, I think it’s also very important to keep in mind that romance books—even those primarily written for a Western audience—are sold and bought across different cultures and generations of women. These subversive elements, mild though they might seem to some of us, may be incredibly empowering to women who have very few other channels by which to receive these ideas. The romance reader's desire for emotional justice at the end of each story resonates, I think, with women who have felt that lack of justice and power through their own life experiences.

The virgin amnesiac mistress bride with a secret baby story can be escapism or an exploration of any number of themes around sexuality, gender politics and reproductive rights. It all depends on a combination of the author and their writing as well as the reader and their personal reflections on what they're reading.

Do I think romance authors and readers need to challenge genre assumptions more? Yes, especially in areas of contraception and abortion. Romance as a genre is still fairly conservative here.

Do I think these issues make the genre inherently not feminist? I’m not sure.

Because I think where I’m up to is this: When we consider what romance fiction brings to feminism, it's not enough to talk about what we as individuals get out of romance fiction or how we interpret this book or that. Knowing the genre's popularity among female readers, we should also be asking: How do women read romance and why do they love these books so much? Only then, I think, will we have a better understanding of the genre's importance and influence in women's lives.

Kat Mayo has been reading romance books since she was ten, when she discovered an abandoned Mills & Boon book in her grandmother’s garage. She runs Book Thingo, an Australian blog for readers of (mostly) romance fiction, and tweets as @BookThingo.

Additional notes
(A more comprehensive discussion of each of these references will appear here: Feminism in romance – annotated notes at Book Thingo.)

1. Reader point of view in romance
The Androgynous Reader: Point of View in the Romance (in Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writer on the Appeal of Romance, edited by Jayne Ann Krentz), Laura Kinsale argues that passive heroines are placeholders and that romance readers identify with the hero as much as—or sometimes more than—with the heroine.

2. Popularity of m/m romance with female readers
Why do women read M/M romance/erotica? by J. Leigh Bailey
All m/m fiction is not created equal by Sunita
An angle on slash and the appropriation debate by Kivitasku
Yaoi: What makes the yaoi genre appealing to women? (Response by Erica Friedman)

3. Rape fantasy in romance fiction – This issue is much discussed in the romance reading community. Here are some excellent discussions, and in most cases the comments are just as thought-provoking as the original posts:
Sexual Force and Reader Consent in Romance by Robin Reader argues that consent to the rape fantasy is in the hands of the reader.
Rape and Romance Reader by Laura Vivanco, who was a guest poster here at Australian Women Writer’s Challenge in February
Talking about the R Word by Candy Tan
When is rape fantasy acceptable or at least tolerable? by Mrs Giggles: ‘the rape fantasy is popular in fiction because it allows the heroine to have sex and experience pleasure without having to take any accountability for it’.
Women’s Rape Fantasies: How Common? What Do They Mean? by Michael Castleman: ‘[rape fantasies] imply nothing about one’s mental health or real-life sexual inclinations.’
Romance novels in The Journal of Sex Research by Jessica Tripler

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Saturday, 7 April 2012

Getting to Grips with Horror and Madigan Mine

Award-wining Fantasy writer Tansy Rayner Roberts ventures across to the dark side in her review of horror writer Kirsten McDermott's Madigan Mine. Tansy writes:

I hesitated at first over the challenge to review a work outside my usual genre - not because I didn't want to do it, but because I have such eclectic genre tastes.  I'm known as a fantasy and science fiction writer, for instance, but also write YA and for children, and am shortly to have a new crime series published.  I read quite a bit outside those three genres as well, especially chick lit, with the occasional romance, and classic literature.  I almost went for 'modern literary' as a genre but after hearing so much anti-genre sentiment from those in the literary scene in talks surrounding the Stella Prize,* I really felt the need to wave a genre flag quite dramatically.

Which brings me to horror. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the genre, and after several years reading short stories for review, was willing to dismiss the whole lot of it as misogynistic, shlocky and unpleasant.  But it was Kirstyn herself, a friend and colleague, who called me (and my fellow presenters on the Galactic Suburbia podcast) on my bias.  As she pointed out, I had over the past couple of years raved happily about several works of Australian horror, and dark fantasy.  I enjoy her work, and the work of people like Kaaron Warren, Peter Ball, Margo Lanagan and Paul Haines.  Was I not just falling into the trap of saying that all the stuff I liked was, by definition, not really horror?

Given that our podcast has an ongoing theme of examining your own prejudices as a reader, I was utterly shamed by this comment, and have done my best since not to contribute to the way that horror is often summarily dismissed as worthless.  After all, exactly the same thing happens to fantasy all the time, and I hate it when I hear a fantasy or science fiction classic "re-classified" by a non-genre reader who doesn't want to admit that the thing they just read and loved was actually fantasy or science fiction.

But here's the thing - I still don't like horror.  When it's brilliant, I will read it and appreciate it, can even marvel at how it does that thing very well, but I don't enjoy it.  Kaaron Warren's Slights was a masterful horror novel, and it made me feel icky for weeks afterwards.  I still haven't quite recovered from reading the brilliant and disturbing "Wives" by Paul Haines.  And don't get me started on what Peter Ball did with unicorns in his acclaimed novella "Horn," or how I can't reread Margo Lanagan's "Singing My Sister Down" [short story in Black Juice] because I have had children since the first time I read it and I'm pretty sure it would break me into pieces.

I've still only read one Stephen King novel, It, which I loved and hated all at once.  I gratefully took the 'out' offered to me when someone (I can't even remember who) told me that if you've read It, you pretty much don't have to read any other Stephen King novel ever because it does all the things.  And so I didn't.

I recently overcame my own discomfort with horror as a genre to present a seminar at the Hobart Women in Horror film festival, Stranger With My Face, and to be a judge of their horror script competition, and found myself drawn with fascination to discussions of the female gothic, and the various other tropes that were examined, turned over and reimagined in the scripts I read.

I still don't like horror.  But it intrigues me.  The idea that a genre can be formed from a feeling, from a few overlapping emotions, rather than plot formula, character expectations or a particular kind of world or idea... that is deeply fascinating and compelling.

All of which is a terribly long way around to saying that it took me a year to pick up Kirstyn McDermott's Madigan Mine (when you like a person you really don't want to hate their book) and found it compelling, disturbing and thought-provoking all the way through.  I'm pretty sure I still don't like it, but that's okay, because this isn't a book that wants to be liked.

It's a book that kinda wants to freak you out and Kirstyn, you achieved that for sure!

Madigan Mine is the story of a not-as-young-as-his-lifestyle artist drop out type bloke called Alex, who begins the novel trying to deal with the death of Madigan, the young woman he has loved since childhood, who became his lover but was never entirely his.  Madigan was the talented one, the one with all the personality and the passion and the drive and the emotional issues - Madigan, in short, is far more interesting than the hero, and it's hard not to think she would have made a far more interesting protagonist.

Luckily for the readers, Madigan totally agrees with this sentiment.  As Alex drifts back and forth through grief, flashbacks and day to day life, Madigan is working to bring him down, steal his body and come back to life through his physical presence.  Or... is she doing it at all?  Is Alex having a mental breakdown?  Has his obsession with his angry tragic girlfriend pushed him over the edge?

It's to the author's credit that a bunch of utterly unlikeable characters come so beautifully off the page in all their self-absorbed glory.  The balance of horror with reality is subtle enough that I am reminded more of 'literary' thrillers like Donna Tartt's The Secret History or Barbara Vine's A Fatal Inversion than any other horror work I have read in recent years.

Wow.  Do you see what I did there?  I totally tried to make Madigan Mine sound awesome by claiming it wasn't really horror.  And I wasn't even trying to make a point.

But yes, unpleasant characters, sinister goings on, art, the horrors of upper class Melbourne suburbs, and all manner of powerful visual descriptions that pop off the page.  This is a horrible book, really.  But I couldn't stop reading it.

Kirstyn McDermott has done something very clever here, making a male character into the 'haunted woman' prototype often seen in gothic fiction.  She has also, in Madigan, created a marvellous monster who wreaks destruction as much when she is alive and human than when she is a ghost, or a figment, or an obsession, of the protagonist. 

I may be a little bit more afraid of Kirstyn's brain than I was before I read her book.  And that's what horror is all about, right?

Tansy Rayner Roberts is the author of fantasy novels Power and Majesty, The Shattered City and Reign of Beasts (the Creature Court trilogy).  She also recently authored a short collection, Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press). She blogs at tansyrr.com, podcasts with Galactic Suburbia, and can be found on Twitter as @tansyrr.

In 2011, Power and Majesty won both the Ditmar for Best Novel and the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel. The Shattered City and Love and Romanpunk both received Aurealis Award nominations for this year.


* Tansy writes: At a recent discussion panel in Hobart, for instance, one of the panellists made belittling, dismissive comments about all manner of genres including chick lit, romance and science fiction, implying that women's work in these fields was unimportant and that only Literature was worth discussion - despite the fact that the Stella Prize itself has overtly stated that it is inclusive of genre fiction.
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