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Original poster

Stupidities and irritations in novels

264 replies

UnquietDad · 30/12/2008 11:43

What are the things which annoy you most in fiction? Things characters do, assumptions authors make, etc?

I think my number one has to be the "affluence assumption", where people who are supposedly worrying about money still "have" to send Jonty and Jocasta to the lovely little prep school and violin lessons. (Mind you, there's enough of that on here.)

DW has just finished reading these, which feature such laughable idiocies as a state primary school where people talk about "first years" and "second years" and which has its own dedicated science block and music block.

There are an awful lot of thirty- and forty-something women writing novels these days who are out of touch with any reality beyond their cosy little London mums-and-coffees-and-gym circle. And - surprise, surprise - they are books about cosy little London mums-and-coffees-and-gym circles.

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expatinscotland · 30/12/2008 21:26

What irritates me is how characters in novels can simply pick up and move to whatever country they please, with nary an immigration or visa issue.

tribpot · 30/12/2008 21:24

No, agree, I think chick-lit is a genre targeted at women, women writers don't write to a single genre. Austen, despite being surely quite chick-lit-ish by our standards clearly wrote to a universal audience who viewed it as social commentary not "girl meets landowner"

In terms of location-genre, my home city (Leeds) is Woman-of-Substance country, ah yes, an entire genre on its own, gritty serving girl takes on the entire blardy world. And wins.

Original poster
UnquietDad · 30/12/2008 21:17

And on the other hand I have never read a word of Wilbur Smith, Jack Higgins, et al...

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Original poster
UnquietDad · 30/12/2008 21:09

I don't have any data on that, tribpot. It's hard to say from my own experience, because most people I know are in couples and, like me and DW, each will read the books the other buys as well as their own.

I think it's fair to say most men don't read a lot of chick-lit. But that's more to do with the way these books are marketed and their vacuous subject matter. I'm quite happy to read Margaret Atwood, Maggie O'Farrell, Anita Brookner, etc., because they aren't marketed as "women's" writers and they write about universal themes.

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midnightexpress · 30/12/2008 21:06

Hmm, not sure about that dittany: the big publishers are so much more influential, or at the very least have so much more financial clout than the smaller ones that if women are in charge of those then it makes a big difference, IMO.

I can only speak for the (very big) publishing house that I worked for pre-children. I was working in a non-fiction division, but my manager, my manager's manager, and her boss (the head of division) were all women, as were all bar one of the directors. Loads of the commissioning editors for fiction were women and the Chief Exec was a woman.

tribpot · 30/12/2008 21:05

But UQD am I making it up, or is there really a case for the fact men don't like to read women authors? (In general I mean, not overall).

Original poster
UnquietDad · 30/12/2008 21:04

Marketing evidence (I was told by a female editor when discussing book jacket colours) shows that women prefer not to read books with blue covers and men won't read books with pink covers.

If you think this is horrifyingly superficial, you'd be right. Sadly, it's also true.

Some holiday chick-lit books have come out in two editions - one with a pink cover for her, and one with a blue cover for her man to read by the pool and not feel ashamed.

I wish I was making this shit up, I really do.

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dittany · 30/12/2008 21:01

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midnightexpress · 30/12/2008 20:56

Though I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of Mr Parsons' oeuvre.

midnightexpress · 30/12/2008 20:54

Quite a few dittany. HarperCollins for one. Penguin for another. IME, there are a lot of women in the top jobs in publishing. It's way more feminised than many industries. I'm afraid you can't place all of the blame for chick lit at the feet of men.

ScottishMummy · 30/12/2008 20:54

once read a chicklit i got free with a magazine summat about shopping.felt dirty,will never get that time back

Original poster
UnquietDad · 30/12/2008 20:52

I've no idea who came up with "chick lit" (I think it's a horrible phrase) but people run with it and use it, including women agents and editors. I've no idea how many directors are women - I suspect few, but then again 30 years ago there would have been none. All I can say is there seem to be more female commissioning editors than male ones now in my experience - so something has changed.

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dittany · 30/12/2008 20:48

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tribpot · 30/12/2008 20:45

Love Paretsky. Yes, the earlier books are having to kick back against 80s stereotypes and so have Vic knocking back the whiskey and not doing the pots, times have moved on - thank god!

I was musing only yesterday (really) that once someone said to me "why are all your favourite singers women?" to which I replied "why are all yours men?". No-one would think it odd if you listened to Oasis, Coldplay, whatever. And I have a feeling that in the main the same is true of authors. Is it mainly women who read men and women and men tend to read men?

I think Marian Keyes tends to be typed as chick lit when she shouldn't be, given the stuff she covers with enormous humour and wit.

Original poster
UnquietDad · 30/12/2008 20:44

I must admit I like Hornby, tolerate Parsons, but don't like Mike Gayle at all. There is something smugly "New Man writing about relationships and being so Mr Sensitive" about his books which grates.

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Original poster
UnquietDad · 30/12/2008 20:41

kickassangel - hmmm, my anecdotal evidence suggests the exact opposite. It may have been true that publishing was male-dominated 15 or even 10 years ago. My perception is that this is no longer the case. The vast majority of the editors I have dealt with are female, as are most of the publicity people. In fact, it's probably the gradual emergence of younger female commissioning editors in houses like Penguin which has changed the culture to a more "feminine" one. I have been reviewed by more women than men. My agent is female, as are a great many others. Every Society of Authors event I have ever been to has been female-dominated.

Vast numbers of new books appear to be by women - I have no definite data on the actual ratio among published writers, although I expect the Society of Authors do. The idea that some kind of conspiracy against good women writers is keeping them out is wishful thinking, sadly - if they're not getting published it's because they're not good enough.

dittany - it's sadly not the wankers in publishing who like stereotyping women with pink. It's the wankstresses in marketing!

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LiffeyValleyOfTheDolls · 30/12/2008 20:21

Solid, I've managed to read a few Val McD's and I borrow the face of the guy from clocking off, on bbc about 5 yrs ago. You know, the factory owner? His face fits. Couldn't read if robson's face was in my head.

LiffeyValleyOfTheDolls · 30/12/2008 20:18

Sorry guys, I'll admit to being put off Terry Pratchett's books by their covers. I take one look and think, eeeeeeewooooo.

Ok, I'll elevate Terry to erect dick lit.

LOL spluttering out my coffee over limp dick lit. You lot. ah, you kill me.

BitOfFun · 30/12/2008 20:08

ROFL @ mental image of RG's straining-at-too-small-nuts -face seared onto my eyeballs right now

solidgoldstuffingballs · 30/12/2008 20:02

Tony Parsons is what I would call limp-dick-lit. Same goes for Mike Gayle and that other whining bell-end Nick Hornby.

Oh, and anyone who wants English crime fiction that's written by a woman and not fixated on London should try Val McDermid's Kate Brannigan books - set in Manchester, lots of fun and the heroine has a nice bloke partner (not a handsome bastard or a dysfunctional relationship), no major past traumas; she's pretty sorted. Actually Val McD's other books are pretty good on the whole as well as long as you can rid yourself of the mental image of Robson Greene - a man who has the permanent facial expression of someone whose undercrackers are a size too small...

Also second Dittany on approving Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky, though I prefer Paretsky's later books to the earlier ones, which are sometimes a little bit too ranting-80s-feminist.

Cathpot · 30/12/2008 19:26

As an antidote to chicklit can I explore further an author who will not be bothering with what may or may not be going on in the pretty little heads of his women characters. I once spent 3 weeks in the tea hills of Kericho with nothing but the complete works Wilbur Smith. All heros of the plot are alarmingly well hung, usually have suffered and overcome some sort of life threatening injury, often loss of a limb, which is a challenge that they overcome without reducing ability in the bedroom/ on horseback/ with a gun. Women in these plots can sometimes drive remarkably well but are largely defined by wonderous breasts, one pair (and this has stayed with me for nearly 20 years) were taut, had translucent skin crisscrossed with blue veins. That my friends is true 'dicklit' leave the lovely terry P out of it.

dittany · 30/12/2008 19:23

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RustyBear · 30/12/2008 19:16

Terry Pratchett? Dick Lit????? Are you serious Liffey? Can't see any points of similarity between Pratchett and the Smith/McNab/Clancy type of stuff...

LiffeyValleyOfTheDolls · 30/12/2008 19:10

Dicklit! ha ha! yes, can we all say that a couple of times to everybody we know, until the dicklit genre is well-known to be terry pratchett, Tom Clancy etc..

BitOfFun · 30/12/2008 19:06

When I worked in an independent bookshop, we had a large section of "general fiction", and a smaller one of "light fiction", which was where the so-called chicklit tended to be shelved. The problem was that most female authors were marketed with certain kinds of frothy-looking bookjackets, pretty much regardless of the content, in an effort to make them sell, I suppose. The thing is though, there were plenty of quite decent writers in there, both chicklit and more serious, but they were made to appear less worthy of attention from more "serious" readers. It would irritate me really, especially as writers like Tony Parsons and Nick Hornby were classed as "general fiction", whereas a female writer of the same calibre writing about the same kind of stuff would be "light".

We changed it and just scrapped the light fiction category, but even the way publishing houses create the jacket design subtlely reinforces this kind of stereotyping IMO.