no more lady novels for me, thanks

#40days40books entry 20

Somewhere along the way, I realized that I don't read a lot of fiction written by women. Specifically I don't read romance novels and I don't read domestic fiction.

There's a reason.

What I mean by 'lady novel' and 'domestic fiction' is this story line: Amy and Betsy have been married for 14 years and everything seems perfect. Until Now. A family tragedy opens old wounds and Amy struggles with a dark secret that threatens everything she's worked for. And what happens with Betsy has to confront her own doubts and questions?

The dark secret is: adultery, incest or rape (sometimes all of them). The doubts are usually sexuality or trust. The family tragedy is either a terminal illness or the death of a child.

You've read this book. You've read a bajillion of this book. Someday I would love to write about how global on-line etailers have directly contributed to the rise of this specific kind of book.

For now it is enough to say: enough.

As a woman who writes things and who loves to support women who write things, I read women's writing. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, blogs, essays, tweets and listicles.

But not this. Not this limited, classist, homophobic, sexist, lazy narrative promoting nonsense.

There are books that do not, by the way, conform to this obnoxiousness, even as they look like they do.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng is a story about a family reeling from the death of a child. The dead girl's parents and older brother struggle to face what that means in their own ways, and that involves dredging conversations out of long-held silences. There is adultery. There is racism. There is a kind of internalized sexism. There is hero-worship of the golden boy. But it works. It is never easy. It is never convenient. It never panders to privilege.

And it could be the norm.

Until then, I will stick with my barricaded ladies and Irish internal monologues.

#40days40books list