I have decided that I don’t like “women’s
fiction.” That may seem odd coming from a female, but I joined a book club and
have read several novels that fall into this category. While the cover copy for
these books was intriguing, which is why we selected them, the stories failed
to live up to expectations. They shared a number of common elements:
1. Unsympathetic, shallow, and
boring characters
2. Nonsensical and/or slow
plotting
3. Deviations into long passages
of unnecessary backstory
4. Author intrusion
The astonishing part is that they
were traditionally published and all made it to the New York Times Bestseller List and a few of them have been sold to movie studios.
“HOW??? WHY???”
Where were the editors when these
manuscripts were being considered. Who would approve them as written? What
happened to novels with compelling characters that the readers care about, with
plots that keep them turning the pages and get them lost in their worlds?
Legal thriller author and writing
instructor William Bernhard (the Ben Kincaid series) has numerous guidelines
for creating a blockbuster. One, he says, is readability—creating a narrative that is “unputdownable.” With
these books, I had to force myself to plod on through boring paragraph after
boring paragraph.
And what
about character arcs? The characters should go through some change by the end
of the book. These did not. Things happened despite
them, not because of them. They didn’t solve their own problems.
I’m going to be revealing the
plots of two of the books I read, so be forewarned.
The novel our club originally
chose was The Great Alone, by Kristin
Hannah, a prolific author. This one made me so angry that had I not been
reading it for the group, I would have quit after the first chapter. The main
female lead is a wimp, and nothing turns me off more than a weak woman.
Around page 250, I was surprised
to see the plot finally kick in. Those first 250 pages could have been
condensed into 25-50 to keep the story moving. The problem with the last 200,
though, is that the real plot is rushed. What was in these pages should have
been the entire book but stretched out and expanded. I’m not sure why the
editors at St. Martin’s Press didn’t see this and do something about it.
And what about adding tension and
introducing intrigue?
In The Husband’s Secret, by Liane Moriarty, there was a secret, but it was presented amid endless pages of backstory.
The wife, Cecelia, found a letter her husband had written years before that was
to be opened only in the event of his death. But John Paul was still very much
alive. Holding the letter in her hands was the first line of the first chapter.
Then the rest of the 15-page chapter was backstory, with only the last line
once again addressing the letter and what Cecelia should do with it. The next
two chapters left this plotline altogether and introduced two new characters
along with much more backstory.
Eventually, we find out that the
letter is John Paul’s confession that when he was a teenager, he murdered a
girl. Cecelia is horrified, but instead of realizing that she had just become
an accessory after the fact, she rips the letter into tiny pieces and decides
to say nothing. After all, she reasons, John Paul is a wonderful father. How
can she turn him in, even if he is a murderer?
She has now committed a second
crime--destroying evidence.
There is also no depth of character. As a reader, I didn’t care about
any of the people in the story except for the dead girl, Janie. This made
reading the book even more torturous.
As for conflict and controversy, this book had none. The characters
take the easy way out and do so in a boring way. Rachel is Janie’s mother, and
she hates Connor, a coworker at the school where she is employed, thinking he
is the killer. She dreams of this man’s demise. Yet, when Cecelia breaks down
and tells her that John Paul is the real killer, does Rachel transfer her
hatred to him? No. She decides she can’t hate him because he’s handsome. She
thinks that she should invite him over for tea and find out what her daughter’s
last moments were like. Then the author intrudes, explaining that it doesn’t
matter that John Paul doesn’t go to prison because Janie died of an aneurysm
anyway.
None of these characters face any consequences. Rachel deliberately tries to
run down Connor with her car but hits Cecelia’s young daughter instead. Even
though the daughter survives, she loses half her leg, but everyone believes it
was an accident, so Rachel is not held accountable. John Paul doesn’t go to
prison, and Cecelia doesn’t get in trouble for destroying evidence. Where is the
justice for Janie?
Apparently some of these authors’ other works are of higher quality, but they
certainly missed the boat with these two. But again, because I made the
commitment to the club to read through this drivel, I should get some credit in
purgatory.
I have enjoyed plenty of terrific
women writers, such as Amy Tan, Jodi Picoult, Maeve Binchy, Anne Hillerman—the
list goes on—who deserve to be on the bestseller list. But it seems that
quality writing has nothing to do with being a bestseller. This does a terrible
disservice to those great women—and men—who share that spotlight.
I know I won’t be reading any
more “women’s fiction,” and I’m not the only one in the book club who feels
this way. A few of us intend to suggest that we read other genres, such as
murder mysteries, historicals, spy novels, sci-fi—anything!
I wish these novels had been as
well-written as their cover copy. Perhaps screenwriters believe they can take
these weak plots and turn them into something better for the silver screen. Since
actors can put in the depth of character the books lack, perhaps they can keep
these movies from becoming box-office flops.
