Boy Books and Girl Books

by Elizabeth Zelvin

Some time ago, I heard an eminent editor admit that in his publishing house, people refer without irony to “boy books” and “girl books.”

Since I became active in the mystery community, I have heard many discussions of the fact or belief that, by and large, men will not read books, or at least novels, by women. That’s why many female writers even now conceal their gender behind initials (although. like the initials in phone book listings, the use of initials in authorship has become a signal that the person thus identified is probably a woman).

Men may object to this generalization, which oversimplifies as generalizations always do. It might be illuminating to ask what books by women they read. Are they “boy books” written by women?

Are they crossover books? Noir is very fashionable these days, and women as well as men are writing noir. Megan Abbott comes to mind—a woman who had already written a scholarly examination of the tough guy in American fiction before her first novel was published. Or how about women whose prose style is “tough” and would have been called “masculine” before the women’s movement? I think of SJ Rozan, a writer I admire greatly and a former architect, of whom and even to whom I’ve said that her prose is built like a brick s***house. Not a wasted word, not a dangling clause, not an adverb. It doesn’t hang together—it grips.

A hundred years ago, when I was a college English major, there were two kinds of writer, or rather, two prose styles: Hemingway and Henry James. Hemingway’s the guy who put the kibosh on polysyllabic words of Latin derivation and made action verbs king of the sentence. Back then, it was possible to say, “I don’t warm up to that Hemingway style. I don’t know that I want to write that way.” I know, because I said it, and no one lynched me. Today, that choice has become an absolute. The highly respected Stephen King, a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America, boils down the how-to of writing to this: “Read, read, read. Write, write, write. And lose the adverbs.”

Actually, adverbs aren’t lost. They have migrated to the other side of the aisle, where the girl books sit. A prolific and talented short story writer (not one of SleuthSayers’s bloggers) once told me that Woman’s World likes adverbial writing. Woman’s World, as we know, is a tough market to crack and pays well. My informant, who’s also published in EQMM and other presigious markets, said that when he writes for WW, he makes sure he puts those adverbs in.

Am I saying women don’t write nice tight sentences with action verbs? No, of course not. I can delete an adverb with the best of them. I think it’s subject matter, focus, and sensibility, to use an old-fashioned word, rather than prose style that separates the boy books from the girl books.

Relational psychology offers a convincing approach to human psychological development that explains how and why men mature through separation and women through connection.

The feminist psychologists who thought up relational theory were probably not thinking about boy books and girl books, but it works pretty well. Separation and autonomy—the tough-guy loner PI—boy books. Connection and relationship—traditional character-driven mysteries—girl books. Another psychological model uses the gender-related concepts of instrumental and expressive traits. Instrumental—technothrillers—boy books. Expressive—character-driven mysteries—girl books.

Am I exaggerating? Oversimplifying? Of course. But like the eminent editor, I’m making the point that there are boy books and girl books. Let’s tackle the distinction from another angle. Let’s look at the Great American Novel. Suppose we lived in a less patriarchal society.

Suppose we had always acknowledged that there are boy books and girl books that have to be judged separately on their merits within their own categories, the same way there’s a male winner and a female winner in the New York Marathon. Here are my picks. Great American Novel, boy book division: Huckleberry Finn. Great American Novel, girl book division: Little Women.

How many men have read this wonderful book? Its author created characters so real that it’s still in print almost 140 years after publication, still read for pleasure—and with pleasure—by millions of readers, and still capable of moving readers to tears on an umpteenth rereading, as well as inspiring some of us to become writers like its protagonist. My husband has. I’m proud to say he’s read almost all of Louisa May Alcott, motivated by an interest in the vivid and accessible picture of life in 19th century New England in the context of Transcendentalism, whose theorists included Emerson, Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott, Louisa’s father. He (my husband, not Bronson Alcott) also wanted to know what was in those battered books that I was crying over every time I read them. I’d like to hear from any other man who has. And if so, did you come to it on your own, or did a woman (or girl) make you read it?

Cross the T's and Roll the "I's"

by Dixon Hill

I’m afraid I’ve been out of the net a lot, lately, which is why you haven’t seen many comments from me over the past few weeks. The reason for this, however, has nothing to do with my office power problem, which I’m happy to say is now fixed.

Instead, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time in various doctors’ offices with my dad, who’s combating some ongoing ailments. 

During this time, I’ve noticed that doctors seem to enjoy making people wait for long periods in uncomfortable chairs. The good news is, this gave me a lot of time to read while my dad napped beside me.

Philip K. Dick

I’ve enjoyed all three books of the Hunger Games series (Had a hard time putting them down, in fact; much better than the film, though lacking in description [imho]), several EXCELLENT books by Alan Furst (recommended by one of my SS compatriots a few weeks back), re-reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Philip K. Dick), and discovering the short stories of Philip K. Dick in two wonderful anthologies of his work. 

Though Dick tended to write Science Fiction,I believe his short story The Eyes Have It is clearly worth posting on our SS site. And, when you read it, I’m pretty sure you’ll rapidly understand why I think so (assuming you haven’t already read it, and are now nodding rapidly).  

Thanks to Project Gutenberg, I was able to upload this comedic gem for your reading pleasure. I hope you enjoy!

The Eyes Have It 

by PHILIP K. DICK 

IT WAS quite by accident I discovered this incredible invasion of Earth by lifeforms from another planet. As yet, I haven’t done anything about it; I can’t think of anything to do. I wrote to the Government, and they sent back a pamphlet on the repair and maintenance of frame houses. Anyhow, the whole thing is known; I’m not the first to discover it. Maybe it’s even under control.

I was sitting in my easy-chair, idly turning the pages of a paperbacked book someone had left on the bus, when I came across the reference that first put me on the trail. For a moment I didn’t respond. It took some time for the full import to sink in. After I’d comprehended, it seemed odd I hadn’t noticed it right away.

The reference was clearly to a nonhuman species of incredible properties, not indigenous to Earth. A species, I hasten to point out, customarily masquerading as ordinary human beings. Their disguise, however, became transparent in the face of the following observations by the author. It was at once obvious the author knew everything. Knew everything — and was taking it in his stride. The line (and I tremble remembering it even now) read:

… his eyes slowly roved about the room.

Vague chills assailed me. I tried to picture the eyes. Did they roll like dimes? The passage indicated not; they seemed to move through the air, not over the surface. Rather rapidly, apparently. No one in the story was surprised. That’s what tipped me off. No sign of amazement at such an outrageous thing. Later the matter was amplified

. … his eyes moved from person to person.

There it was in a nutshell. The eyes had clearly come apart from the rest of him and were on their own. My heart pounded and my breath choked in my windpipe. I had stumbled on an accidental mention  of a totally unfamiliar race. Obviously non-Terrestrial. Yet, to the characters in the book, it was perfectly natural — which suggested they belonged to the same species.

And the author? A slow suspicion burned in my mind. The author was taking it rather too easily in his stride. Evidently, he felt this was quite a usual thing. He made absolutely no attempt to conceal this knowledge. The story continued:

 … presently his eyes fastened on Julia.

Julia, being a lady, had at least the breeding to feel indignant. She is described as blushing and knitting her brows angrily. At this, I sighed with relief. They weren’t all non-Terrestrials. The narrative continues:

 … slowly, calmly, his eyes examined every inch of her. 

Great Scott! But here the girl turned and stomped off and the matter ended. I lay back in my chair gasping with horror. My wife and family regarded me in wonder.

“What’s wrong, dear?” my wife asked.

I couldn’t tell her. Knowledge like this was too much for the ordinary run-of-the-mill person. I had to keep it to myself. “Nothing,” I gasped. I leaped up, snatched the book, and hurried out of the room.

 IN THE garage, I continued reading. There was more. Trembling, I read the next revealing passage:

 … he put his arm around Julia.

Presently she asked him if he would remove his arm. He immediately did so, with a smile. It’s not said what was done with the arm after the fellow had removed it. Maybe it was left standing upright in the corner. Maybe it was thrown away. I don’t care. In any case, the full meaning was there, staring me right in the face.

Here was a race of creatures capable of removing portions of their anatomy at will. Eyes, arms — and maybe more. Without batting an eyelash. My knowledge of biology came in handy, at this point. Obviously they were simple beings, uni-cellular, some sort of primitive single-celled things. Beings no more developed than starfish. Starfish can do the same thing, you know.

I read on. And came to this incredible revelation, tossed off coolly by the author without the faintest tremor:

 … outside the movie theater we split up. Part of us went inside, part over to the cafe for dinner. 

Binary fission, obviously. Splitting in half and forming two entities.  Probably each lower half went to the cafe, it being farther, and the upper halves to the movies. I read on, hands shaking. I had really stumbled onto something here. My mind reeled as I made out this passage:

 … I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it. Poor Bibney has lost his head again.

 Which was followed by:

 … and Bob says he has utterly no guts. 

Yet Bibney got around as well as the next person. The next person, however, was just as strange. He was soon described as:

 … totally lacking in brains. 


THERE was no doubt of the thing in the next passage. Julia, whom I had thought to be the one normal person, reveals herself as also being an alien life form, similar to the rest:

 … quite deliberately, Julia had given her heart to the young man.

It didn’t relate what the final disposition of the organ was, but I didn’t really care. It was evident Julia had gone right on living in her usual manner, like all the others in the book. Without heart, arms, eyes, brains, viscera, dividing up in two when the occasion demanded. Without a qualm.

 … thereupon she gave him her hand. 

I sickened. The rascal now had her hand, as well as her heart. I shudder to think what he’s done with them, by this time.

 … he took her arm. 

Not content to wait, he had to start dismantling her on his own. Flushing crimson, I slammed the book shut and leaped to my feet. But not in time to escape one last reference to those carefree bits of anatomy whose travels had originally thrown me on the track:

 … her eyes followed him all the way down the road and across the meadow.

I rushed from the garage and back inside the warm house, as if the accursed things were following me. My wife and children were playing Monopoly in the kitchen. I joined them and played with frantic fervor, brow feverish, teeth chattering.

I had had enough of the thing. I want to hear no more about it. Let them come on. Let them invade Earth. I don’t want to get mixed up in it. I have absolutely no stomach for it.

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net 

See you in two weeks, 
Dixon

Debut Novelist Alert

Since I began this twisting and turning journey in becoming a writer, I have had opportunity to get to know some exceptional authors. Anita Grace Howard is one of them. Her debut novel, Splintered, is available as of January 1st and should be one of the first books you buy this year.

This book is as exceptional as its author in more ways than one. An author's first published book is rarely a hardcover version, but this one is -- it rarely has such compelling cover art, but this one does -- it rarely packs such a punch to deserve to hit the top of the best-seller list, but I'm going out on a limb and predicting: This one will! (In fact, I will go even further and say this will be the new Hunger Games, Twilight, Harry Potter kind of book.

The premise all but forces a reader to want to dive into this book. The protagonist, Alyssa, hears whispers of bugs and flowers. These are the things her mother had experienced and due to them had been placed into a mental facility. Alyssa's family stories relate a perpetuating curse via her ancestor, Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Alyssa's own adventures prove Wonderland is terrifying.

The story of Anita being wooed by her agent who actually flew to our small city to meet the author and sign her as a client is unheard of, but then, so is this book. It started winning praises about as fast as it could be read by those in the publishing world.

Of all the writers I've met, Anita is probably the most sincere nice person out there in the publishing world. She deserves everything she is getting with this book's obvious success. It doesn't hurt that she's beautiful, too.


Now that I've shared this wonderful news author and her legacy about to explode, let me assure you, there are plenty of new, struggling writers out there worthy of our time to discover and enjoy. I often ask book store managers who has a debut novel on the stands and they are always happy to lead me to them. When I worked as a book reviewer, I saw many good books by authors who would probably get "lost" simply because they are sandwiched in between established authors with a known sales marketability  and celebrity books that are bought because their name and/or image is already a brand the public recognizes. I ask that you seek those that didn't get as much push from their publisher due to advertising budgets being slashed for new authors.

As the economy suffers, it's been proven people look for entertainment in which to escape the woes of the world. As I was watching Ken Burns' "The Dust Bowl," I kept remembering my grandparents saying, "We went to the movies every week and read, read, read. It was all we could do."

I'm suggesting we delve into books, sharing the good ones with each other, especially those of new-to-us authors. Right now, it may be all we can do to keep our sanity. Let's escape together into another world. Begin the New Year by reading Splintered and be sure and let me know what you think.

Rosemary & Thyme

David Edgerley Gates

Those of you who know me, or have some sense of my taste in books and writers, could easily imagine I'm not that crazy about cozies.  I'm a big fan of JUSTIFIED, for example, with its crazed hillbillies strung out on Oxycodone, and ready access to high-cap mags.  I like the dark corners of Dutch Leonard and Ian Rankin and Dennis Lehane.  Psychotics and losers and bent cops, high octane and graphic exit wounds.  It might then come as a surprise that I'm absolutely queer for a Brit mystery series that's set in the world of, wait for it, gardening.  Oh, my stars and whiskers.  What's next?  Pass the Earl Grey.  The old boy's gone gone into the deep end over DOWNTON ABBEY.

Well, not quite.  The show's called ROSEMARY & THYME.  Too cute by far for a title, you might say.  And what of its conceit, two gals of a certain age, in the middle fifties, say, who club up together to run a landscaping shop.  Not high concept, particularly, not Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger as twins.  Who greenlighted this project?  Dead out of the starting gate.  (Oh, did I mention that Season Three picked up a bigger audience share than 24, in the same time-slot?)

Here's the premise.  Rosemary, the hottie, beats men away with a stick, but she's just lost her job.  Laura Thyme, a former cop, has been left by her husband of thirty years for a younger woman.  They pool their resources and start a business.  In amongst the pruning and spading and earth between their fingers, murdered bodies turn up in the shrubbery.  It follows as the night the day, that our two overly-curious heroines get sucked in, not that they're too averse, or how else would you have a show?

We should probably credit Masterpiece Theater and PBS for bringing Brit TV to the States., the most obvious example being UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS, but many others.  Then the raw market for product brought more, Benny Hill, and ARE YOU BEING SERVED, not all on PBS.  A&E syndicated a few, buying them direct.  Mysteries and cop shows were big, LOVEJOY, INSPECTOR MORSE, adaptions of Dick Francis.  Some of them better than others, some didn't make it across the pond.  THE BILL, for instance, has never been broadcast here, for whatever reason---impenetrable London slang?  It was John Thaw's breakthrough part, you'd think it would have an audience, after MORSE. Who knows?  LOVEJOY was big in the States, and even now, the complete series on DVD will set you back a hundred and eighty bucks on Amazon.  I love Ian McShane as much as the next guy (and DEADWOOD made him a household name), but a hundred and eighty bucks?

Why, then, is ROSEMARY & THYME so engaging?  Or the better question, why do I find it so charming?  It doesn't have Boyd Crowder, or Raylan smacking Dickie Bennett around.  It doesn't have Ian McShane saying "fuck" every third or fourth frame.  It doesn't even have Morse, ridiculing the long-suffering Lewis.  And the mysteries themselves, it must be said, are somewhat lame, although occasionally one will catch you by surprise. The two-part opening episode of Season Two, "The Memory of Water," completely blindsided me, even though it owed overmuch to Ross Macdonald, but we all steal shamelessly from the masters.  The answer is that the engine behind ROSEMARY & THYME isn't the plotting, but the dynamic between the two lead characters, who are both familiar, and comforting, but who also have the capacity to startle you.  And not always in comfortable ways.

I should come clean about my passion for Felicity Kendal (voted 'best bum' in a Brit poll, when she starred in the series GOOD NEIGHBORS, another show that's never translated to America), who plays Rosemary. She was saddled with the adjective "cute," early on, with her performance in SHAKESPEARE WALLAH, and never quite shook it, for the simple reason that she is.  The nice thing about this show is that she gets to leaven the cuteness with a quick dose of the acerbic.  Pam Ferris, who plays Laura, is nothing if not acerbic, at least in character.  Her range of parts is mildly astonishing, police procedurals, gothics, Dickens, and most recently CALL THE MIDWIFE.  It must be her face, a sort of plastic Rosetta stone, malleable but encoded.

The relationship between the two characters is relaxed from the get-go, a couple of girls who know better, out in the wide world, but there's a sense in which their vulnerability, the trust issues, make them uneasy, even with each other.  They rely on their instincts, and their instincts are sometimes at odds.  The best moments often come when they doubt one another, and one isn't quite convinced.  Usually this results in the unconvinced party being at jeopardy from the villain.  I never said it wasn't generic.

Every once in a while, though, something happens that's off the radar.  An episode where Laura's son comes to see her.  She thinks he's been recruited by his dad to beg her to come back, because her ex is a chickenshit.  So he is, but the kid's only there to ask to sign over the title to the old house.  The ex has an offer on it, and wants to sell.  Quick disappointment shadows her face, and she just as quickly sucks it up.  And then she signs.  So, how is it with you? she asks her son, smiling.  You read her pain.  

Why do I like this show?  Because for all its contrivances and sometimes completely silly stuff---a guy gets shot with an arrow during a Medieval archery contest?---it often has the ring of homely human truth.  The crime isn't exotic, or out of the ordinary.  It's not the arrow, but the heart.

Location, Location, Location

I was at a house-warming party a few days ago when I was confronted by someone who had read my book, "The Thirteenth Child".  He had had a few drinks and wanted to correct me on a bit of geography in a particular scene.  "You can't walk from the railroad tracks to the bay," he assured me.  "No street runs from the tracks all the way to the bay."
First of all, let me go on the record as being both surprised and pleased that this fellow had read my book.  "So this is the guy..." I thought.  I had been hoping to meet him and shake his hand.  But, he wasn't in the mood for handshaking, he wanted an explanation.  How could I be so stupid?

"Well," says I, "it's not this town, it's 'Wessex Township'--I made it up."

Now he gives me a look from under his eyebrows--oh yeah?  "Then how come the main street is called Mechanic Street just like here?"

I took another sip of my drink.  I was kind of enjoying this.  "It isn't," I corrected the Guy Who Had Read My Book, "It's Mercantile."  Hah! 

He kind of deflated a little at that.  "Oh...I guess I read that wrong."  He avoided me the rest of the evening. 

That'll teach him to read my book. 

But it didn't escape me that a fellow citizen had recognized what he thought was home in my book's setting.  In all fairness, the location of the book was very closely modeled on the town I (and he) live in.  In fact, I had a lot of fun recreating my little bit of heaven into a setting for dark and horrible things.  And it saddened me when my editor demanded I thin out the dense forest of words describing it.  Even so, my former fan had seen exactly what I wanted; after all, if he hadn't, I would have failed an important litmus test in creating the location.  The only reason I didn't make it my own town (as I explained to the disappointed man) was that I would have then been tied too tightly to the actual geography, and I didn't want that kind of restriction.  Though I was drawing heavily from reality, I was at the same time creating someplace completely unique.

Location certainly plays a huge role in literature.  Sometimes it's almost another character: a supporting actor without dialogue.  Read Janice Law's "Fires Of London" if you want an example.  Brilliantly done descriptions of London during the Blitz; never labored or lengthy (But this is only one example of brilliance in Janice's novel--there are many, many others.  If you haven't read it, you owe it to yourself to do so.).  Novel-length fiction allows writers a large canvas on which to paint their scenes and settings; short fiction generally requires a few deft strokes to evoke atmosphere and location.  Both disciplines are demanding.

I've always enjoyed certain authors for their ability to evoke time and place, Graham Greene being one of my favorites.  He traveled the world in his lifetime and spent a great deal of time in foreign lands; seldom as a tourist.  His novels certainly reflect this.  Had anyone written a major work on Haiti prior to "The Comedians"?  Who knew of Viet Nam before the "The Quiet American"?  I could go on, but you get the point.

Location is sometimes a destination, sometimes home.  Every character has to either live somewhere, or be someplace else.  Where he or she is located is often a key part of the plot.  Even the journey to arrive at someplace must become a setting in a story.

Even as I write this, a comment by Eve Fisher on a post by R.T. Lawton (also excellent at foreign and exotic locales) mentions Cecelia Holland, reminding me of another author gifted at creating a sense of place.  In her case, however, the places are seldom, if ever, within her lifetime, and therefore experience.  She is one of the best of those writers who pen the bewilderingly labeled "Historical Fictions".  Her novels have recreated settings in medieval Mongolia (thus providing the connection to R.T.'s blog about the Mongolian New Year observance), England on the fateful eve of the Battle of Hastings, and the Iceland of two feuding brothers at the close of the Viking era.  No easy feat these things.  Not only must she convince us of the verisimilitude of the land she has invited us into, but she must also convincingly portray a time, and a people, that she could only know through research.  When I think of the Man Who Read My Book's objection over the placement of a single street in a fictional town, I quail at the prospect of attempting what Cecelia Holland and Janice Law have both accomplished in their various works.  Even Graham Greene always wrote in contemporary terms.

Have any of you reading this ever placed a story in a locale that you have never visited or lived in?  Though I have been fortunate in my life to have traveled a great deal, I will admit to having practiced this in a story or two.  But, I won't say which ones.  So far, I've never been caught at it.  In my defense, I did do a heck of a lot of research prior to attempting them.  But in the overwhelming number of cases, my stories don't stray far from the towns, states, and countries of which I have, at least some, personal knowledge.

Robert Ghirardi, another favorite writer of mine adept at evocative description, said in an interview (and I'm taking the liberty to paraphrase here as I can't locate the article) that modern authors are too bound by what they have personally experienced.  He was referring to the strictures placed upon the imagination in this age of near-instant knowledge through the internet and its children.  Any deviation from what is generally known can be instantly fact-checked, making fiction writers cautious to stray too much from what they either personally know or can confirm.  The only safe way to do that is delve into the realm of fantasy, which it seems, more and more authors are doing.  It is also one of the fastest-growing genres in terms of readership, which might be a result of the dearth of truly "exotic" locales in our steadily shrinking world.

Be that as it may, location, exotic or prosaic, provides the canvas upon which we paint our stories, and our success at doing so is as important to our characters as it is to our readers.  Would we accept Hamlet as a gloomy Jamaican?  Wouldn't Sherlock Holmes have been a very different person as a product of 1880's Mexico?

Finally on the subject of location, I have an upcoming story in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine called, "Murder Town," that is set in the Yucatan.  I'm not going to tell you whether I've been there, or based the setting solely on research--I'll leave that up to you to decide.  Either way, I hope I got it right.