Drawing inspiration from real life: Wendy James' The Mistake

Wendy James first novel, Out of the Silence, won the 2006 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Book. Her latest novel, The Mistake, has attracted considerable attention, particularly as it draws inspiration from a real-life crime, and depicts a woman caught up in a "trial by media". Investigative journalist and novelist Caroline Overington volunteered this view of the book and the case that, in part, inspired it.

Overington writes:

The new novel by Sydney writer Wendy James The Mistake centres on an Australian woman, Jodie Evans, who at age 19 gives birth to a baby she doesn’t want.

According to the blurb, Jodie is "scared, alone and desperate" so she "adopts the baby out – illegally – and tells nobody."

Twenty-five years later, Jodie is a middle-class, middle-aged housewife with two teenagers. She’s visiting hospital one afternoon when she runs into a nurse who remembers her, and asks about her first baby. 

Jodie explains that she adopted the little girl out. The nurse must be suspicious because she makes a few inquiries, and can’t find any record of the baby’s birth being registered, and before you know it, police have been notified, the media is onto it, inquests are being held, and people are wondering if Jodie might not have killed the child.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s very close to the true story of Keli Lane, a Sydney water polo player who gave birth to a baby girl, Tegan, in Sydney in 1996 without telling anyone.

Many years later, when a social worker asked Keli what happened to Tegan, she told him that she’d given the baby to the father, but he could find no record of the birth being registered, so he called police, an inquest was held, the media got involved and Keli was eventually found guilty of murder (she was so distraught when the verdict was read out, she fell to the floor, screaming, and paramedics had to attend to her. She continues to proclaim her innocence from prison.)

Sixty Minutes reporter Allison Langdon wrote a terrific book about the Keli Lane case - The Child Who Never Was (2007) – in which she asked all the fascinating questions: how did Keli manage to hide the pregnancy from everyone, including her parents, and even her boyfriend, who was sharing her bed?

Why did she do it not once but three times? (Two of Keli Lane's other secret children were adopted out.) How did she manage to leave the hospital with Tegan, hand the child over to the father, and then go straight home, where she changed into a white suit so she could get to a wedding? What did she do about her breast milk?

Langdon’s was a rich and satisfying book, largely because you knew it was all true, and yet so completely and utterly unbelievable. If you tried to tell that story in a novel, people would think it far-fetched.

In writing The Mistake James has set herself the opposite task: the story isn’t real, yet she has to make it believable, which explains why some pages are given over to (fictional) press clippings, and press releases, or comment pieces from journalists who have this or that to say about Jodie and her missing baby.

The journos say the kinds of things that journos would say, and so do the cops, and the lawyer, and you do get pulled along by the drama. 

That said, I so wish the character of Jodie had been drawn with a little more energy, for at times she seems quite zoned out of what’s going on around her.

Early in the book, for example, she gets a letter from the nurse saying, "There’s no record of what happened to your baby, and therefore, I’m going to have to call the police" - or words to that effect.

She scrunches up the note and puts it in her back pocket and carries on with what she’s doing. Her husband of more than 20 years comes home – a man who has loved her, and cheated on her - so she tells him news that might make a person's head explode - "I had a baby that I never told you about and that child is now missing" - and he basically says fine, and goes and calls a lawyer.

The lawyer comes over, and they open a bottle of red wine and have a bit of a chat about it, in particular about how unpleasant it’s going to be, if the media find out.

I felt like screaming: but there’s a baby missing! Doesn’t anyone care what happened to the baby?

Of course, you’re supposed to think that maybe Jodie already knows what happened to her – that’s the mystery, did she kill the baby, or sell the baby?

But even if she did kill the child, wouldn’t she be totally out of her mind with fear of that coming out? And if she didn’t kill the child, would she be freaking out about possibly going to prison for something she didn’t do?

On the other hand, it’s clear that James has a solid understanding of the lives of teenage girls because the teenage daughter in the book, Hannah, is a stand-out character, curious about recreational drugs, and boys, and her own, blossoming body, always testing the limits of her mother’s authority over her (and the limits of her principal’s patience!).

All in all, it’s well worth reading to the end, to find out what really happened (it’s not what you think, and I won’t say more than that.)   

Caroline Overington has published several novels: her first, Ghost Child, was an Australian bestseller, her second, I Came to Say Goodbye, was selected as one of 50 Books You Can’t Put Down, and Australian Women’s Weekly’s Book of the Month. Her latest book is Matilda Is Missing. Caroline lives in Bondi with her husband and 11-year-old twins.

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Several AWW participants and others have reviewed The Mistake. (Click on their names to read more.)

• Bree: "What I really admired about this book though, apart from the well constructed story, the faultless pacing and the depth of the characters was the fact that it carefully, gently, makes you think that you know what has happened before it cuts you off at the knees."
• Brenda: "The absolutely amazing twist at the very end of this book had me stunned, I certainly didn’t see it coming. I would highly recommend this book to everyone, it was harrowing, and an absolute knock-out of a read!"
• Lizzy Jane "The book really captures the way the media pounces on cases like this and creates a momentum that is hard to stop." 
• Shelleyrae "The complexity of James’s protagonist forces the reader to consider their own assumptions based on appearance, class and circumstance... A stunning novel."
• Bernadette "The complex characterisations are one of the standouts, particularly Jodie Garrow who steadfastly refuses to conform to people’s expectations of her."
• Angela Savage "a plot that will haunt you long after the final pages."

Wendy James writes movingly of the perils of drawing inspiration from real life stories on her blog: literary gnat. She also touched on the subject in a recent interview with crime author Angela Savage. An abbreviated extract of this interview is reprinted below (with permission).

[Angela] You refer to the Lindy Chamberlain case in The Mistake in exposing the media's role in shaping public opinion. Were there any other real life cases or characters that inspired the novel?

[Wendy] The novel's initial inspiration came from the story of Keli Lane, the water-polo champion who was recently convicted of murdering her infant daughter, Tegan. Tegan hasn't been seen since she was discharged from hospital with her mother in 1996, and despite extensive police searches, authorities have been unable to locate her. Lane  herself  maintained throughout the period of investigation (though her story changed) that the child had been adopted out unofficially. The case is certainly sensational, but it was the attitude of some media -- including various internet sites -- that really struck me.  The focus was all on Lane's perceived "character" -- promiscuous, secretive, ambitious, a liar -- rather than the available, and completely circumstantial, evidence. Like Chamberlain before her, Keli Lane was found guilty in the court of public opinion even before she went to trial.

I was also very interested in the way the media and the internet treated the parents of Madeleine McCann, the child who was abducted from a Portuguese hotel room a few years back now. The McCanns came under a certain amount of suspicion, as well as a great deal of criticism, not only for leaving their children unattended, but for their subsequent behaviour. Kate McCann, her mother, in particular, was treated very badly for not behaving as a griving mother is supposed to behave -- she was too cool, too composed for people's liking. The Booker Prize winning author Anne Enright even wrote a piece for the London Review of Books called 'Disliking the McCanns' which was pretty shocking. It's hard to summarise, but it was clear that her dislike for them, for pretty spurious reasons -- looks, speech, religious beliefs, perceived attitudes -- drove her suspicions. It was very cold-blooded, and very unsympathetic. It left a rather nasty taste in my mouth. Lindy Chamberlain was appalled by this very obvious media bloodlust -- seeing parallels with her own situation -- and came out publicly in Kate McCann's defence.

Both [James' first book] Out of the Silence and The Mistake have plots involving missing, possibly dead babies. Disturbing themes, especially for anyone who's a parent. As a mother of four, are these themes about giving voice to your deepest fears or exorcising murderous fantasies?

Maybe both? No, I expect it was partly giving voice to very deep fears, but really my own experience of motherhood has been one of relative ease (and pleasure, too, I have to add!). I had a roof over my head, a partner, enough money to survive, I could still work and study, I wasn't some sort of social pariah. I was interested in was looking at how much harder it would be to love and nurture and protect a child if all that physical, emotional and social scaffolding wasn't in place... What happens to the maternal instinct if there's nobody looking after the mother?

Read the full interview here.

Note: The Mistake doesn't appear to be available in ebook format from any AWW participating e-bookstores. The ebook is available from Booktopia, an online bookshop that regularly hosts interviews with Australian authors. It is available in print from bricks-and-mortar bookstores, including Abbey's Bookshop which did the fantastic AWW window display in the wake of International Women's Day.

'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

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.

Is The Getting of Wisdom anti-feminist? Virginia Lloyd thinks so.

While Miles Franklin tends to get a lot of attention because of the literary award, another prominent Australian who chose to publish under a male pseudonym may not be so well known. That author is Ethel Florence Lindsay Richardson, better known as Henry Handel Richardson. Richardson, a talented musician, was born in East Melbourne in 1870, but moved with her mother to Europe in 1888 so she could study at the Leipzig Conservatorium. She published several books, including Maurice Guest and the trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony.

This year, The Henry Handel Richardson Society is running the Henry Handel Richardson Centenary Writing Competition to celebrate the ex-pat author's only return to Australia in 1912. (Entries don't close till August 31, so there's plenty of time to enter.) Here author, editor and agent, Virgina Lloyd, reviews another of Richardson's novels, The Getting of Wisdom.

Virginia Lloyd writes:
 

The Brooklyn Public Library, a brisk ten-minute walk from my apartment, holds one copy of Henry Handel Richardson’s The Getting of Wisdom (1910). It is a Dial Press tie-in edition to the 1977 film adaptation. The cover features a still photograph of Sigrid Thornton as the central character, Laura Tweedle Rambotham.

As the library’s holdings of Australian fiction are sparse, I was surprised but glad to find a copy locally. I’m researching musically trained women writers – of whom there are many – and I needed to read it: Henry Handel Richardson was a gifted pianist whose family travelled to Leipzig, Germany, in 1888 so she could pursue her studies. Her experiences as a student there led her to write her first novel, Maurice Guest (1908). Happily The Getting of Wisdom, Richardson’s second novel, is not only shorter but also a far more enjoyable reading experience - at least for this reader.

The ghost of Jane Eyre’s school, Lowood, haunts the pages of The Getting of Wisdom, which is primarily a coming of age story told through Laura’s eyes. In the opening pages of the novel we see Laura clash with her mother and feel stifled by the cloying attention of her younger sister, who goes by the nickname Pin. Laura feels more than ready for boarding school but is shocked and disoriented by the factional behaviour of the other girls once she gets there. Richardson vividly draws Laura’s horribly awkward first day at school and her inept efforts at trying to make friends. As an outgoing but poor student whose mother works for a living - a secret Laura tries hard to keep - she fails repeatedly to fit in to a culture that rejects idiosyncrasy. Richardson writes: Laura “suffered …and it was suffering; for her schoolfellows were cruel with that intolerance, that unimaginative dullness, which makes a woman’s cruelty so hard to bear.” Unfortunately most women have experienced just this sort of thing at one time or another. My own experiences of being ostracized at school made these passages spring brilliantly to life.

My biggest disappointment with reading this 1910 novel in 2012 was that it struck me as anti-feminist. This is not just about the pseudonym that Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson chose to wear like a coat throughout her writing life. As Germaine Greer points out in the introduction to the Dial edition, the tradition of the pseudonymous woman writer had been well established by the Bronte sisters and numerous others over the 19^th century. Richardson claimed that she wanted to test the assertion that had been in the press at the time about how easy it was to distinguish a woman’s writing from a man’s. (Didn’t we just go through this with V. S. Naipaul’s sexist comments about being able to detect a women’s work within a couple of paragraphs - to smell, as Francine Prose put it in Harper’s, the estrogen in the ink? Plus ça change... .) As Greer says, “Why Henry Handel Richardson should have assumed her more ponderous male mask is not so readily apparent” when compared with someone like Marian Evans (George Eliot), whose books’ moral high ground would have been eroded by the revelation of her “scandalous private life”.

I suspect that the male pseudonym was for Richardson a more complicated issue than she would admit even to herself. On reading The Getting of Wisdom, I could not help but feel that Richardson had a great deal of ambivalence about being a woman.

In one early scene, an exasperated visiting teacher accuses Laura’s friend Inez  of having “a real woman’s brain: vague, slippery, inexact, interested only in the personal aspect of a thing.  You can’t concentrate your thoughts, and, worst of all, you’ve no curiosity – about anything that really matters. … It makes me ashamed to belong the same sex.” This condemnation of an entire sex on the basis of one lazy student seems extreme if not pathological. In terms of the plot, however, the teacher’s criticism provides Laura with the motivation she has lacked to now. The narrator writes of Laura: “[S]he did not want to have a woman’s brain, thank you; not one of that sort; and she smarted for the whole class.” From that moment on Laura applies herself to her studies and makes dramatic progress in all subjects except arithmetic.

The most independent woman in the novel is Laura’s financially independent aunt, who makes her own living, lives by herself, and helps Laura to get into the school and to keep her there. But Richardson describes her as “an independent, manly person”, which is a curious and pointed choice of adjective.

The logic of the novel seems to suggest that Laura’s striking independence of thought and behavior reflects the conscious turning away from the humiliation of having a “woman’s brain”. Perhaps in Richardson’s mind this includes being preoccupied with men and marriage. Laura’s lack of interest in these subjects for most of the novel is a refreshing change not only from the obsessions of her peers, but from the subject matter of much fiction both then and now.

In Laura, Richardson gives us a wonderfully complex character. She is willful and intelligent, if not terribly smart. Her lack of shyness causes her to leap into situations she lives to regret, such as when she plays the piano for the headmistress, who condemns her afterward for her “shameless” physical performance and her choice of repertoire (Thalberg instead of Mozart). Laura is vain, lonely, vulnerable, and prone to lying to impress friends. The hole she digs for herself over her stay at the house of the married curate, in which she invents an elaborate story about their wild romance, is hilarious.

I also loved the way Richardson draws this novel to a close. The final third is masterfully controlled in pacing and character development. For any other latecomers to the work I will not spoil it here. It is enough to say that Richardson takes Laura on an emotionally challenging journey towards the end of her school days, and is not afraid to make her heroine suffer.

Germaine Greer contended that The Getting of Wisdom is Richardson’s “only great book, precisely because the subject is like the rest of us, ordinary, and therefore deeply important.” I think Laura Rambotham is a character well worth getting to know. The novel is fascinating reading, if only to provoke a reader to think about how much, and how little, changes in the lives of women.

Viginia Lloyd is a Sydney-born Australian literary agent, editor and freelance writer who currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her memoir, The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement, was published in 2009 by Penguin and is available from a major international bookseller as an ebook.

 

The Golden Stair: Kate Forsyth's Bitter Greens: review by Margo Lanagan

Kate Forsyth is a novelist and poet best known for her award-winning Young Adult Fantasy series. April sees the launch of her book for adults, Bitter Greens, here reviewed by author Margo Lanagan.

Margo Lanagan writes:

The year before last, I wrote a Rapunzel story. It began with the prince arriving at Rapunzel's tower to find her severed plait of golden hair tumbled in a pile on the grass. As he mourned over it, the witch rode up. She captured him, took him to her castle and imprisoned him in a dungeon. There, the single strand of hair that he had souvenired sprang to life, insinuated itself into the padlock and released him, and led him through the castle to rescue Rapunzel from her prison room.

KateForsyth has found a stash somewhere of just such live, enterprising threads. Her new book for adult readers, Bitter Greens, is a turf-to-tower-window braid of live, red-gold hair. It's a big, glorious read, full of love, lust, pain, politics, blood red and blue, and some of the best frocks and the worst fleas ever.

Forsyth binds three main strands into this glowing cable. First, via the life of Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force, who published 'Persinette' in her Les Contes des Contes in 1698, she leads us into the staggeringly ornate, crowded, venal, powdered-and-patched court of Louis XIV. Through Charlotte's eyes we witness the scandal, the witch-hunting (literal and figurative), the favour-mongering and the grinding of the intricate machine of court etiquette—all revolving around the spoilt, unsmiling King whose attention, like a toddler's, must be caught in just the right way if the sun is to shine in Versailles. All this determinedly superficial making and breaking of livelihoods and reputations finally gives way in the dead-serious matter of the persecution of the Huguenots, which forces the Protestant Charlotte-Rose to choose between exile and banishment to a convent. 

The second strand of the story is the Rapunzel tale itself. Forsyth takes this up just as Charlotte-Rose did at the Abbey of Gercy-en-Brie, amplifies and vivifies it, anchors it firmly in late-Renaissance Italy and winds it through the Charlotte-Rose story. "No one can tell a story without transforming it in some way," says Charlotte towards the end of the book, and this is a fairytale retelling that grows layer on layer, allowing us to glimpse a whole society from Medici to mendicant even as we revel in the magic at work upon, and within, the poor imprisoned mask-maker's daughter Margherita.

***

Margo Lanagan is an internationally acclaimed writer of novels and short stories (her list of prizes can be found here). She lives in Sydney. Her most release is Sea Hearts. She maintains a blog and can be found on Twitter as @margolanagan.

"In defence of books written by women for women"

This week a Twitter discussion broke out as to whether romance, as a genre, is inherently feminist. The discussion was prompted by a review in which avid romance reader and blogger Kate Cuthbert took a respected romance author to task for not even considering her options when faced with an unplanned pregnancy.

On Twitter, Kate asked, "[W]hat obligations, if any, do romance novelists have to women's rights & feminism?" Aussie romance and erotica author, Keziah Hill, answered, "None, in the same way no novelist has an obligation to any social movement. However, novelists have to be prepared for readers to vote with their feet if idiots re social concerns." Hill followed this up with the statement that there is "nothing inherently feminist about romance".

The view that romance is inherently feminist is propounded by supporters of the genre; they regard the fact that romance is the one genre overwhelmingly written "for women, by women" as "proof" of its feminism. Yet, as Hill and others point out, the genre consistently fails to engage with issues of vital importance to many women, including, according to Hill, such issues as "Reproductive rights, the consequences of heterosexual hegemony" and the "power struggle with men over childcare and housework". Tweeter and blogger Kat (aka @BookThingo) remarked that the latter problem is often overcome in romance narrratives by having a hero rich enough to afford a housekeeper. Kat's comment was no doubt intended to be facetious, but what she says is right: wealth does equate with freedom from drudgery for many romance heroines, and love "earns" this freedom. That's the thing about romance: it's fantasy; it's aspirational, rather than realistic.  If it's going to be taken seriously, it has to be on other terms. But what other terms?

In what sense, if any, can it be considered "feminist"?

This question needs to be asked of romance precisely because the genre is so popular and written largely for woman and by women. It needs to be asked because the diversity of women's writing is often elided by its detractors, with few distinctions being made among different genres such as "romance", "chick lit" and "women's fiction", let alone more serious or ambitious writing by women. Writing by women is regarded (and often dismissed) as lightweight, domestic, focused on relationships, courtship, marriage and children. In addition, romance is particularly derided for supporting outdated and stereotypical gender roles. But as Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches Trashy Books blog was quick to point out in the Twitter conversation with Keziah Hill, examples can be found of romance writing which both support and subvert the hegemony [of patriarchy]. Romance now has many subgenres and reflects many different values. So why is it still so easily dismissed?

Caught up in this debate is the question of "popularity" versus "literary merit". One persistent assumption has been that romance is cheap and nasty, mass-produced and lacking in literary merit, as well as likely to propound pernicious reactionary values. Its popularity among women readers and writers is not deemed sufficient for it to merit serious attention. As Helen of AlltheNewsthatMatters blog asked rhetorically recently of pornography, "How do we judge the worthiness of a particular form of popular culture? Is the entertainment legitimate just because consumers are buying?" 

Fans of the genre are likely to counter this view with the claim that there are many examples of fine writing within the bounds of the genre, merit reflected in the awards regularly given out by associations such as Romance Writers of Australia and the Australian Romance Readers Association. So is there something else about romance that irks people?

Recently on the AWW blog, feminist publisher Susan Hawthorne discussed books "that make you think" and asked, "What else is writing about?" For many champions of romance, this question is key. For these readers and writers, romance is about the body, about emotions, about the visceral response of women's lived experience of love, lust and longing for connection. This is the aspect of romance which is dismissed.

But, if they're right, why? In what way are visceral depictions of women's bodies and emotions anathema to literary merit?

Today's guest blogger, award-winning fantasy author Louise Cusack, doesn't offer answers, but her post does draw our attention to the questions.

Louise Cusack writes: "In defence of books written by women for women"

The first time I heard Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe) described as a ‘romance genre writer’ I couldn’t help a quiver of “Damn right he is!”  I’d been sick of hearing about male authors writing love stories while female authors were said to have written romances, the inference being clear: love stories were important and life altering and powerful, while romances were more often described as frivolous and clichéd. 

Maybe this isn’t my argument to weigh into.  I am a published fantasy author after all – different genre – but I started my career trying to write romance and have stayed a member of Romance Writers of Australia for two decades.  I have a lot of friends there, some of whom are Harlequin Mills & Boon authors.  Thankfully the days of being slighted for writing “those silly little books” seems to be passing, which is just as well.  Romance Writers of America say on their website “More than a quarter of all books sold are romance. $1.36 billion in sales each year,” so I imagine those authors are laughing all the way to the bank, and caring less what their novels are categorised as by reviewers and critics.  Especially as the huge number of eReaders being purchased has created even more sales for romance publishers, with fans happily downloading novels so they don’t have to feel embarrassed about reading them on the train.

And there’s another problem.  I take issue with the fact that a woman should feel embarrassed to be seen reading a romance novel when no one blinks at a man reading a western or a crime thriller. What is it about women’s fiction that makes it less in the eyes of the literati, when as a genre it sells so much more?

Let me take you back a few years.  When I first started writing in the nineties I attended a “meet the authors” evening in Brisbane, hosted by the Queensland Writers Centre.  One of the speakers was an International best selling Mills & Boon author from the Gold Coast who’d written over thirty novels and had print runs in the hundreds of thousands, translated into several languages.  The other was a well respected Brisbane author of literary fiction whom I later found out had been given a print run of 500, many of which were still sitting in her garage.  That evening had a profound impact on me.  I’d grown up wanting to be a novelist, but I hadn’t given genre a thought.  That night I did think.  I realised I could either try for the approval of a marginal elite, which might get me into ‘the club’ and make awards and literary grants more likely.  Or I could write what I was convinced a great number of readers would love, and earn a living that way.  Of course there was no guarantee that I’d be good enough to get published in any form, but “commercial fiction” as my agent was later to call it, became my holy grail. 

To me, all books fit some genre, and Literary Fiction is just another genre beside Romance, Crime, Fantasy, Erotica and Young Adult.  Further, genre doesn’t dictate quality.  I’ve read some superlative fantasy (Kim Wilkins’ Giants of the Frost and The Autumn Castle are so achingly evocative they deserve to be Lit Fic) and I’ve also read some extremely boring literary fiction that wouldn’t have made it past the slush pile of a decent women’s fiction publishing house.

 

So why is there a literary cringe when women write and read stories that resonate with them emotionally?  Why should the intellectual experience of a story be considered more worthy?  These are all questions that deserve more considered answers than I have space for here, but as I see my fantasy romance trilogy, Shadow Through Time, digitally released this month by Pan Macmillan’s digital imprint Momentum Books, I don’t hope for the approval of critics or reviewers or government arts departments.  I care about readers.  I care about the women who are going to buy my story, who will hopefully thrill to the fantasy world I’ve created, who will be frightened, and saddened, and excited and delighted, and will ultimately fall head over heels for the champion who saves the princess’s life.  Because that’s what I dreamt of when I was reading Alice in Wonderland and Beauty and the Beast as a child, and I’ve never stopped wanting that emotional ride.

To those who would try and stifle or marginalise any form of women’s fiction, your days are numbered.  The eRevolution is making you redundant.  My readers don’t need your approval or your direction.  They’re getting their reviews from other readers on Goodreads and Amazon and Shelfari.  They’re deciding for themselves what’s ‘worthy’ and what’s not, and in this brave new world it’s not only publishers and agents who are wondering where they fit between reader and writer.

So while I started this blog with a dig at patronising attitudes, I’ll end it by proposing that those attitudes are far less relevant in a digital age.  Storytelling appears to have come full circle, and though our campfire is now called the Internet, its effect is the same.  Has the history of publishing reached a point where we simply let readers decide?  Perhaps their opinions and their economic power are ultimately all that counts.  What do you think?

Louise Cusack is an International award winning fantasy author whose best-selling Shadow through Time trilogy with Simon & Schuster Australia was selected by the Doubleday Book Club as their ‘Editors Choice’.  These novels have now been released as eBooks by Momentum Books.

Spinifex Press turns 21: Book Giveaway

To celebrate Spinifex Press's 21st birthday, the publishers have invited Australian Women Writers to host a giveaway of the following books:

Kick the Tin by Doris Kartinyeri 

Bite Your Tongue by Francesca Rendle-Short

Still Murder by Finola Moorhead

Fish-Hair Woman by Merlinda Bobis 

My Sister Chaos by Lara Fergus

To enter, just leave a comment below and correctly answer the following quiz questions. (Comments will remain hidden from view.) Entries are now closed. 

Winners:
Nic: Fish-Hair Woman
Tansy: Bite Your Tongue
Gillian: My Sister Chaos
Deb: Still Murder
Kandy: Kick the Tin

Method of draw: 
Each correct answer was counted for the draw (represented by a name in a hat). One name was drawn twice (Nic) and was discounted for a second win (apologies, Nic!). The person with the most correct answers was Margaret, but her name didn't come out of the hat. 


Winners, please email Danielle Binks at digital@spinifexpress.com.au. Put 'Aust Women Writers Winner' in the subject heading, give your contact details, and state whether you'd prefer print or an ebook. 


Thanks everyone for entering! (And we can argue among ourselves over the correct answers for e and g.)

Any correct answer given will make you eligible for the draw; the more correct answers you give, the greater your chances of being selected. Comments will be moderated to allow time for as many people as possible to enter. This competition is open to international participants as well as Australian, with your choice of ebook or print copy. Competition will close at AWW's discretion (when enough people have entered to make it competitive and the drawing worthwhile).

Note: Spinifex Press is a feminist publisher. Publisher Susan Hawthorne discussed their recent releases on the AWW blog here.

Note: The following answers (apart from the initially missing "e" and the last one, "q") were supplied by Danielle Binks of Spinifex Press. Both "e" and "g" arguably have more than one correct answer.

Quiz

a. Mother Theresa worked in which Indian city? A: Calcutta

b. The goddess Freya from Norway gives us which day of the week? A: Friday

c. What was it that Marie Curie discovered? A: Radium/Radiation

d. Who loved a sunburnt country? A: Dorothea MacKellar

e. Which early 20th-century Australian female poet and novelist, known as "The Rebel Girl," joined the International Workers of the World?* A. Lesbia Harford (but there may be other contenders?)

f. Who was the first woman to attempt to fly around the world? A: Amelia Earhart

g. Who was the first Australian woman to be appointed to the cabinet? A: Susan Ryan (As the question didn't specify which cabinet, Federal or State, this question may have more than one correct answer.)

h. I was born on 25 December 1933 at Echuca, Victoria, a member of the Yorta-Yorta tribe from the Murray River area. Amongst my ancestors were also the Wurundjeri people of the Melbourne area. When I was a child my family and I walked off the Cummeragunja Station to Mooroopna, and later Shepparton. I went to school in the Good Shepherd Convent in Abbotsford, Melbourne and later worked as a domestic at St Andrews Hospital. I married a Andrew Marimutha, a Malayan Indian, whose name we all shortened. I initiated the setting up of the Aboriginal Health Service and the Aboriginal Legal Service. I also set up Worowa Aboriginal College and later Worawa Primary School for younger children. I am well known for coauthoring the script of Women of the Sun. Who am I? A: Hyllus Maris

i. A well-known figure in Sydney from the mid-twenties to the sixties, she was a voracious reader, often refused to pay cab fares, gave recitations of Shakespeare wearing a green tennis shade. In old age she claimed, ‘I have no allergies that I know of, one complex, no delusions, two inhibitions, no neuroses, three phobias, no superstitions and no frustrations.’ She is the subject of Kate Grenville’s novel, Lilian’s Story. What is her name? A: Bea Miles

j. I was born in Melbourne, Australia and moved to Britain during the 1970s.
My first book of poems was Hecate’s Charms. I have also written a novel, Between Friends and a book on the life and art of Dorothy Richardson. I have written widely on modernist women writers and on lesbian culture and lifestyle. In 1986 I co-authored a collection of poems with Suniti Namjoshi. Who am I? A: Gillian Hanscombe


k. Which Australian poet was taken to court by her ex-husband because of a poem? A: Dorothy Hewett

l. Australia’s best known Aboriginal poet is the author of We Are Going, The Dawn is at Hand, My People and Stradbroke Dreaming. What is her name? A: Oodgeroo Noonuccal (formerly Kath Walker)


m. What is the name of the book by Katherine Susannah Pritchard that centres on the life of an Aboriginal woman?A: Coonardoo (The Well in the Shadow)


n. Which writer left Australia and lived for many years on the Greek island of Hydra? A: Charmian Clift

o. Who am I? I was born in England and later came to Australia. My family ran a Quaker home for down-and-outs. I worked as a nurse, a real-estate agent and a teacher. My manuscripts were rejected for many years. I am now considered one of Australia’s finest writers. My name is . . . ? A: Elizabeth Jolley 

p. Tasma is the pseudonym of what Australian writer? A: Jessie Couvreur

q. Who is the woman in the following photo and what is she famous for? A: Louisa Lawson, famous for editing and producing The Dawn, Australia's first journal produced solely by women.

Remember, the more answers you get right, the greater your chances of winning, but even one correct answer puts you in the draw.

* Mea culpa. Question "e" was added after an early entrant pointed out it was missing. No entrant will be disadvantaged by the oversight.