A warm celebration of the power of fiction.
More than 500 women share their connection to stories.
Intrigued by women’s enduring love of fiction, Taylor (Emerita, English/University of Exeter; BFI Film Classic on Gone With the Wind, 2015, etc.), who twice directed the Liverpool Literary Festival, sent a detailed questionnaire to women she knew, worked with, or met at literary or bookshop festivals and events and conducted lengthy interviews with women writers and publishing professionals, all to answer her overarching question: “What does fiction reading mean to women?” Drawing on their responses, the author offers intimate revelations of how, where, and why women read fiction; what they read; and how women writers see themselves as “gendered (or not).” Although some findings are predictable—e.g., women read “not just for entertainment and escape, but to help us get through life’s daily trials and major challenges”—many readers convey, with clarity and sincerity, their deep emotional response to novels, characters, and authors. Reading, one woman said, “has taken me to places I longed to go and some I did not want to go.” Women’s most loved books also were unsurprising, with Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre high on the list and Jane Austen as most women’s favorite writer. Some readers from diverse ethnic, class, and racial backgrounds, a minority of Taylor’s respondents, sought out books they believed could improve “their life chances and social mobility.” Noting the popularity of romance novels, erotica, and mysteries, Taylor has found that evolving attitudes about sexual relations have made romance fiction “a dynamic form” that questions archetypes such as the young naïve heroine seduced by an experienced older man, and publishers of romance increasingly realize the commercial potential of attracting LGBTQ writers and readers. Women writers offer candid insights about the particular challenges they face. Some, for example, have been frustrated by publishers’ and critics’ assumptions. “There is still a disposition,” Hilary Mantel complained, “to think that when a woman writes books, she must be commenting on The Woman Question, or on ‘What do women want?’, as if she cannot pull away from personal preoccupations.”
A warm celebration of the power of fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-882768-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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