TW nominated for the womens prize for fiction

[Kit19]

for fucks fucking sake!

"Peters’ longlisting comes after organisers clarified in 2020 that it was open to any “cis woman, a transgender woman or anyone who is legally defined as a woman or of the female sex”. “It’s a prize for women, and trans women are women, so …” said chair of judges and author Bernardine Evaristo."

parental , I think a line to take is that the book may actually be very confusing and disturbing for those in Years 12 and 13 - I can't imagine anyone younger managing to read it properly - who are questioning their sexuality and identity.

Via Rees and Ames, Torrey portrays trans women as likely to gravitate towards abusive relationships and addictive behaviours, and shows no possibility of their receiving support from families.

I'd also argue that the cover - the sort of candy pink -which is associated with books by Jacqueline Wilson and Cathy Cassidy - might encourage younger students to pick up the book.

I think the author intended it to be a book about flawed, disturbed adults who, while aiming to live authentically, end up harming one another. I find the book - which I haven't finished - very confused. It's not clear to me yet, what the author's own view of the characters might be.

As its set in an affluent part of Manhattan - but in an oddly apolitical universe, where Trump doesn't seem to exist - it also seems to have very little to tell English teenagers about the world, which they are going to enter.

I'm not in favour of books being removed from libraries.

I am in favour of librarians being fully aware of the content of books.

As far as I remember, the Shirley Conran/Jilly Cooper/Jackie Colins/Judith Krantz oeuvre was shared widely amongst 12 and 13 year olds when I was at school, but we were at least aware that we weren't reading great literature that represented real life.

I think there are all sorts of problems about school libraries. It's very rare for them to have a full time qualified librarian who is a member of CILIP. So the question of who is actually responsible for buying the stock, and displaying it and dealing with loans, and what the school library policies are gets very blurred.

It gets still more blurred if there's not much money for stock, and a cheap offer comes in.

The book is much more adult/explicit in terms of content than the raunchy bonkbuster novels of the 70s.

There might be a comparison with the use of film. The school would not normally show 18 rated stuff in a class, and if a teacher showed explicit material, they would have have to be accountable.

So I think there should be some accountability about what is stocked - and why - in a school library. This isn't quite the same as advocating censorship....

“The book is much more adult/explicit in terms of content than the raunchy bonkbuster novels of the 70s.

There might be a comparison with the use of film. The school would not normally show 18 rated stuff in a class, and if a teacher showed explicit material, they would have have to be accountable.”

You make good points - and we didn’t obtain Lace from the school library! (And our ‘junior’ public library cards were also limited).

Sarah Ditum has now reviewed Detransition, Baby in The Times. It’s behind a paywall and I don’t have share tokens (not sure what they are to be honest!) so I haven’t linked it, sorry.

It’s quite an ostensibly balanced review but I’ve attached a picture of her final paragraph:

The comments are fairly stridently GC..

I just wondered if any of you had read the entire book, as opposed to seeing the press coverage - finding excerpts of Peters' work online etc.

If so, I'd be especially interested in your reactions....

Gosh, a couple of deleted messages. How intriguing.

If anyone can reply in a way that is in accordance with MN Guidelines, do keep trying.

Have you read it?

I haven’t read it & ive no intention of reading it because it could be the best novel in the entire world and that wouldn’t change the fact someone born male doesn’t belong on a shortlist for prizes for women. It’s not the content that bothers me (though it sounds 🙄🤨) it’s that the prize was set up to help women not ppl who identify as a woman

The specific Woman's prize should never have been created imo.

Can female authors really not compete equally with men ?
Do men or TW have some advantage I'm not seeing?

It just causes more division instead of some perceived level of equality.

Can female authors really not compete equally with men ?
Do men or TW have some advantage I'm not seeing?

The short answer to that is yes, if you aren't aware that books by men hugely dominate review spaces and prizes. Since 1969 32 men have won the Booker Prize, compared to 18 women. The Women's Prize was set up to redress that imbalance.

This Guardian article is from 2011 so way outdated now, but is useful to show why a Woman's Prize was necessary.

www.theguardian.com/books/2011/feb/04/research-male-writers-dominate-books-world

From the article... In the UK, the LRB reviewed 68 books by women and 195 by men in 2010, with men taking up 74% of the attention, and 78% of the reviews written by men. Seventy-five per cent of the books reviewed in the TLS were written by men (1,036 compared to 330) with 72% of its reviewers men

In the US, The New York Review of Books shows a stronger bias. Among authors reviewed, 83% are men (306 compared to 59 women and 306 men), and the same statistic is true of reviewers (200 men, 39 women)

I just wondered if any of you had read the entire book, as opposed to seeing the press coverage - finding excerpts of Peters' work online etc.

2Olives1Onion did and has given a review upthread.

🙄🙄🙄 and they wonder why everyone’s getting so short tempered with them now.

A couple under Sarah Ditum's review made me laugh suggesting that the prize needs to be changed to be the Fictional Women's Prize.

Since 1969 32 men have won the Booker Prize, compared to 18 women. The Women's Prize was set up to redress that imbalance.

And just to confirm: it has done exactly that. Since The Women's Prize was set up, far more women have won, and been shortlisted for, the Booker Prize, and women's writing has a much higher profile than it used to. So it's done an excellent job. And now decided to trash its own reputation...

Thanks for directing me to the review Ereshkigalangcleg. And extra bif thanks to 2Olives1Onion* for writing it. I've dropped in and out of the thread - and it's easy to miss stuff.

Yes, I've read the book - and am in the latter stages of writing a longish piece on it!

@JennieLee

Thanks for directing me to the review Ereshkigalangcleg. And extra bif thanks to 2Olives1Onion* for writing it. I've dropped in and out of the thread - and it's easy to miss stuff.

Yes, I've read the book - and am in the latter stages of writing a longish piece on it!

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Just remembered that someone posted a while back musing about whether the Brit Awards would be made to backtrack after declaring that ‘Best Solo Male’ and ‘Best Solo Female’ would have to stand as categories despite Sam Smith’s difficulties. I don’t think they have, have they?
(Actually, apologies, that might have been a different thread!)

@nauticant

A couple under Sarah Ditum's review made me laugh suggesting that the prize needs to be changed to be the Fictional Women's Prize.

This is great. Or maybe the Women are Fiction Prize?

I’d like to answer the questions being posed but my reply got deleted so

Silvermoon you can always DM me.

What I was trying to do was

a) separate the book from the publicity/Social media noise/profiles about the author/my personal views. Did I find the book well-written, well argued/ interesting/compelling in itself

b) move one to looking at not the story in the book, but the story of and around it. Why has it become a focal point of discussion? What is the backstory? What does the way in which the book has been promoted and marketed about the whole industry around publishing and book promotion?

Hasn't an open letter of complaint been submitted about including a trans author signed by many authors, many of whom, such as Daphne Du Maurier are in fact dead?

@DisgustedofManchester

Hasn't an open letter of complaint been submitted about including a trans author signed by many authors, many of whom, such as Daphne Du Maurier are in fact dead?

It is obviously someone who identifies as Daphne Du Maurier so that is valid.

Women deserve our own literary prizes. The readers and writers who sign this letter—some of whom are obliged to use pseudonyms because of the threat of harassment by trans extremists and/or cancellation by the book industry—wish that you agreed.

A quote from the open letter - I don't think anyone is actually pretending to be Daphne DM or Emily Dickinson etc but the current climate is so hostile towards women that many cannot safely use their real names for fear of harassment or losing their livelihood.

Thank you for highlighting this point Disgusted - I hadn't looked at the letter but it is a good one. What has our society come to when women cannot speak freely in the public space? Are you disgusted by this? Even if you disagree with their views should we not support freedom of speech for everyone?

I noted that in an interview with Torrey, Torrey wishes to become an inspiration for trans people and encourage more trans people like them to write.

That is not encouraging any women to write and Torrey appears to have absolutely no interest in women other than imagining what women might feel like while being hit and having sex (but imo missing spectacularly).

wildwomanwritingclub.wordpress.com/2021/04/06/open-letter-to-the-womens-prize/