A New Twist On "A Room Of One's Own"

One of my January accomplishments was to finish reading A Room of One's Own, a significant piece of feminist writing, by Virginia Woolf. Woolf is one of those writers like Michel de Montaigne, as far as I'm concerned. I like the idea of them much more than I like reading their work. Woolf I can make some headway with, but I feel she rambles. I'm into communication, as both a reader and a writer. I don't want a lot of extra words distracting from the point.

Woolf does make some good ones in A Room of One's Own. She's writing about what women in her era needed to write fiction. She famously says they need a room of their own and five hundred pounds a year. These things, she contends, are what male writers have had for generations and why she can't find many women writers in past historical periods. Or women writers writing about issues of interest to women.

Woolf was writing about male privilege. But she addressed it as a male/female status issue rather than as a social class issue. She didn't, for instance, get into male writers who don't have a room of their own and five hundred pounds a year. Or how the female writers she was writing about could get the room of their own and five hundred pounds a year she claimed they needed.

Just this past week, Sandra Newman picked up Woolf's material and looked at it differently by asking What If You Can't Afford "A Room of One's Own? at Electric Lit. Does that mean you can't write? Newman argues that no, it doesn't.

What would Virginia Woolf have made of someone like Sandra Newman?

Get Mindy Kaling To Blurb Your Book

Last night, for what I think was the first time ever, I purchased a book because of a blurb. Okay, it was an eBook on sale for $1.99. And I have a gift card on file with Amazon, so it didn't cost me anything. But still.

The book was After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman, someone I hadn't heard of. But it was a mystery, which is sort of my reading genre, and, as I said earlier, it was only $1.99, and I wasn't even going to have to pay that because of that gift card that I also mentioned before. Plus the author has a lot of published work, so if I liked this book, I would have her backlist to draw on. All compelling reasons for a purchase.

But not enough.

I went to Lippman's Facebook page (evidently some people do go to author Facebook pages), and I see this: "Laura Lippman is one of my favorite writers. I cannot focus on anything else when I am reading one of her books. Her writing makes me wish I lived a sexier and more violent life." Mindy Kaling.

It was the "wish I lived a sexier and more violent life" part that sold me.

Adult Thrillers Retooled For Teens

I just finished reading Don't Turn Around by Michelle Gagnon. (The paperback comes out next month, by the way.) I was only a few pages in when I thought, Wow, this character, Noa Torson, has a Girl with the Dragon Tattoo vibe. We're talking a seriously computer literate young girl character living on her own who even has a Scandinavian name. (I think we're told it's Danish, while Lisbeth Salander is Swedish.) Clearly making that connection was not a novel idea on my part. Gagnon's website describes the book as "A technothriller: GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO for Teens."

I actually liked this book better than Dragon Tattoo, which I didn't finish because it seemed very bloated and dragged. (I saw all the Swedish movies made from the trilogy, just to keep me in the loop.) I did think the point of view switches between Noa, who, when we first meet her has just woken up on some kind of gurney and has what sounds like a pressure bandage on her chest, and Peter, whose home is invaded during his introduction by men in black types who appear to know his parents and take his laptop, slowed things down a bit. I also wasn't crazy about suddenly bringing in a third point of view around the halfway point. I think it's also around the halfway point that we come to realize that this isn't just a thriller. It now  also has what could be described a science fiction angle. I will admit, however, that that these points are all author talk. General readers probably aren't going to obsess about the kinds of things I obsess about.

For general readers, this is a book that is not a fantasy, not a mean girls story, not a romance. It's a plot driven adventure/thriller/mystery with some scifi thrown in that's set in real world Boston. I'm sure there are teenagers who would be relieved to get their hands on this. It's the first book in a trilogy, of course.

An interesting point, I think: Michelle Gagnon is the author of four adult thrillers. Don't Turn Around was her first book for YAs. It reminded me of Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber. That was Schreiber's first book for YAs after having begun his career writing horror and Star Wars novels. We're talking another teen thriller. Both books could easily have been written for the adult readers the authors usually write for by simply adding a decade to the main characters' ages.

Another similar book is I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga. Lyga isn't an adult genre writer turning to YA. He's always been a YA author. But I Hunt Killers has that same kind of adult thriller reworked for teenagers feeling to it. We're talking a Dexter-type of story, with a Dexter character as a teenager, before he goes off the rails and gives in to blood lust.

Which adult books could we see in YA next?

"Rosemary And Olive Oil" Published At "Alimentum"

My first published fiction for adults (I've written plenty of adult fiction that hasn't been published yet), Rosemary and Olive Oil, went up today at Alimentum, a beautiful on-line journal that focuses on "The Literature of Food."

The story is named for a flavor of potato chip. Seriously. After having eaten them for the first time in a hospital cafeteria, I went on a long quest to find them elsewhere. They're now available at our local chain grocery store.

Is This An Over-The-Top Promotional Op Or What?

Some writers, actors, and at least one artist got together to dress up as some of Edith Wharton's chums visiting her at her little place in the country, The Mount for the article The Custom of the Country: Vogue Recreates Edith Wharton's Artistic Arcadia. I'm having a hard time working out the point of the article and the illustrations for it, since it has far less to do with The Mount than it does with Wharton's sex life, which appears to have been carried on elsewhere. It seems as if they ought to have done an article about her sex life or about The Mount and not tried to confuse everyone by tangling them up together.

All the living people playing dead people seemed to have recent or upcoming projects to promote. Having flattering pictures taken of yourself in costumes seems like the ultimate way to get word out about what you're doing. I'm wracking my brain to think of a comparable project for children's lit people.

Update: I've got it! Louisa May Alcott and all her Transcendentalist buddies! I, of course, want to audition for LMA, and we can all have our pictures taken lounging around Orchard House.

Of Course

The Guardian obit for author Barry Unsworth mentions a number of books he wrote but, of course, not the one I read, Losing Nelson. It was good, too. Though not a children's book. Not even YA.

Writing "About" History Rather Than Writing Actual Historical Fiction

I've been spending a lot of time these past two weeks researching markets, which means that I'm reading a lot short stories and essays at journals, trying to judge if these publications would be good places to submit some of my own work. That's how I came to read The Map by Don Schwartz. Seriously, I'm not just spending mass quantities of time reading.

The Map deals with some modern Germans' discovery of a map of the Warsaw Ghetto. The story has an element of magical realism, I think. But the reason I'm mentioning this adult piece of fiction here, at a blog relating to children's writing, is the author's way of dealing with historical material. I found it particularly interesting since we were just talking about historical fiction here a couple of days ago, and in the comments of that post, Tanita Davis wrote about how when she was working on a historical novel, her editor wanted a hook in the present day. The Map takes place in the present day, and the magical map is the hook that connects the present to the past.

Schwartz is writing in the twenty-first century, and he can't be sure how much his readers will know about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. So what does he do in this two character story? "What do you know about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising?" the secondary character asks. The first-person narrator responds, "Is this another history question? Because you know I know nothing about history."

This gives the secondary character, who knows lots about history, an opportunity to tell what he knows about the uprising. It also, by the way, gives him the opportunity to say, "How convenient for a German," a bit of commentary.

The "What do you know about..." question to give a character an opportunity to spill info isn't anything new. But it's used very well here.

Thank Goodness An Adult Writer Has Written A Children's Book

I've been thinking of reading something by China Mieville for years. As with so many other things in life, I just haven't gotten around to it. Now he has written a children's book, which seems like a good excuse to give him a try.

I have not yet read his Un Lun Dun and only just heard of it about twenty minutes ago. What I have read is Laura Miller's glowing review, Un Lun Dun, in Salon. She comes to praise Mieville but also to bash kidlit.

Miller says, '"Un Lun Dun" is not only sleek of line and endlessly (but not needlessly) inventive, it also offers a nimble, undidactic antidote to all the dubious clichés of the genre. Sick of seemingly insignificant characters who discover they have a secret identity and a momentous destiny? Tired of stories that hinge on cryptic prophecies and the retrieval of magical talismans? Miéville dares to insist that nerve, heart and determination is all a hero(ine) really needs.'

Build up Mieville's book by knocking down a whole genre. Yet according to Miller, Un Lun Dun is set in an alternative London. How many alternative world books exist in children's literature? We're not exactly talking a revolutionary new concept here.

Miller also says, "The authors of children's books have always had remarkable leeway when it comes to echoing the classics. Sometimes the results are merely derivative, but in this case the allusions to Carroll and Baum and Norton Juster and Gaiman only highlight how original "Un Lun Dun" feels."

"Sometimes the results are merely derivative..." is a statement that really needs some documentation of some kind. Also, as much as I've liked Neil Gaiman's writing for adults, he seems a little young to be referred to as a writer of "classics."

I really want to read Un Lun Dun, and I certainly hope I'll like it because I don't enjoy spending time reading books I dislike. But this review has set my teeth on edge so that I'm not going to be going into it with an open mind. Oh, well. Maybe by the time I finally read the book I'll have forgotten about the review. Let's hope.

Another, less worshipful, review of Un Lun Dun appeared in The Los Angeles Times.