Thursday, May 12, 2016

Women writers

  • In May my Canyon Sands Bookclub was going to discuss women's writing and whether there still needed to be a Woman's Literature department at universities or whether we have moved on from that.   I was sorry to miss the discussion.  

    I've read about 100 pages of Alix Hawley's first novel "All True Not a Lie In It"  and thinking that it really sounds like it was written by a man although she is a relatively young woman of 40.  It was hard for me to come up with other woman writers that also didn't necessarily sound like they were women in their writing.  I could really only come up with Zadie Smith who wrote her amazing first novel,  "White Teeth,"  at the age of 25.

    And then I tried to think of male writers who sound like women writing.  I could only think of Alexander McCall-Smith who writes the Number One Ladies Detective series (and also other series....also, very much from what seems a woman's point of view).

    I read a lot of woman writers and I very much appreciate that they give voice to woman's issues and concerns but I do really like the idea that these two young women at least are writing a different type of story.  And I think real progress will be achieved when we just talk of writers without any prefix.

    A few interesting side bits.  Zadie Smith studied English Literature at Cambridge and Alix Hawley has a Ph. D.  in English  Literature from Oxford.  Hawley came to my attention because Jim hired her to do a unit on "To The Lighthouse" (she is a Virginia Woolf scholar) for his open textbook project.  She teaches at Okanagan College. 

    This novel won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the BC Book Prize's Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.  She is definitely someone to watch.   It's a fictional account of Daniel Boone who isn't really a figure or time period I'm particularly interested in (even though I did love playing "cowboys and Indians" as a kid...)  but her writing makes for an engaging story.  Apparently,  she is already on contact from Knopf Canada to publish a second novel.  

    I did alway want a Daniel Boone "Coonskin" hat but of course,  being a girl,  my parents didn't like that idea so I never got one!