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!
