Stupidities and irritations in novels

[UnquietDad]

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.

No, there's always been froth UQD. Ten years ago there was froth too.

It's always been difficult for literary lists to make money, and they've not been expected to. Now they are, the cross-over commercial/literary book is like gold dust isn't it? I think there is a big difference now that writer's aren't grown, which is a great shame. It's do or die on their first book. Much more product-led. But original voices still fight through, I do believe that.

Is it wrong for there to be such a thing as 'women's fiction'? There are distinctive female voices and experiences that can and ought to form the substance of some books, surely? So long as no writed is pidgeonholed or no book denied certain other statuses in virtue of possessing the 'women's fiction' status what is the harm?

Being female isn't incidental to the authorship of Austen or George Eliot or Angela Carter or any number of other writers.

but highbrow though to dismiss them as frothy and somehow not worthy. it depends what you read for and if the book fulfills that need.

your need to read is filled by a certain kind of book and others by another - better, worse, frothier, not worthy of.., lazy - whose to say? all subjective.

books are not ranked in cleverness or goodness really otherwise we would not need all these different books.

but then mumsnet is for middleclass hard talking harridens or whatever the independent sadi we were.

(i am going to do some of that parenting stuff that we are supposed to do now)

Yes, agree BBee, you are right.

Not wrong threadworm, just another genre. I myself cannot abide but science fiction (with one or two exceptions) but wouldn't deprive the world of it

ps agree those frothy books fulfill needs for an audience who otherwise might not be reading (mild PND sent me reading shite such as 'my life on a plate' and a book by that woman who wrote 'in her shoes', funny don't recall much of either but it worked for me at the time.

yep, i have no problem with froth for roth's sake, but there is more of it than there used to be, and it is actually hard to find a 'woman's book' that isn't chic lit without turning to the classics.

if you watch booky programmes, where editors etc are interviewed, the growth in recent years has been in froth, not so much substance, so something original/independent has to be amazing in order to break thorugh.

having said that, i still think it's good that chic lit emerged - what else was there for women before that? m&b is like a comic book, there was no 'female' equivalent to easy-but-fun stuff like detective stories for boys/men. just as long as it doens' become the only things on the shelves. but then, publishing is market driven, just like any oghter industry. if we consume it it, we have no-one toblame but ourselves.

Lol at froth for roth's sake. I just saw that line in threads i'm on and wondered what the precise nature of the froth in Portnoy's Copmplaint might be

"there was no 'female' equivalent to easy-but-fun stuff like detective stories for boys/men"

Why would you say that detective stories are for boys & men? - they are read, and many of the best were written, by women.

i know, very sexist, but that has been how it was viewed, a male dominated genre. in fact, publishing is quite a male dominated industry, even though far more women read than men ([particulalry in teens & twenties). and there are just as many women attampting to write as men there are men. perhaps, actually, that's what makes me most annoyed of all about any book. ever.
9have to go out now, will cathc up later)

Maybe the Dashiell Hammett tough-guy type of story, but not the classic country-house Christie/Ngaio Marsh/Margery Allingham sort.

In fact in my experience as a librarian the only genre that was pretty much exclusively read by men was the cowboy novel, which was maybe the masculine equivalent of M&B.

There is a lot of froth about. I know I shouldn't, but I do tend to blank out those chick lit books with pink covers. Some might be very good for all I know but I just can't be bothered to waste my limited book reading opportunites on it because it has been lumped into a type. Aimed at me supposedly.

During the summer (camping/choice limited) I read a Freya North book for the first time. It was predictable and pants. Imo.

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.

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..

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...

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.