That was it for the rest of the day. I was hooked.

If you’re a fan of Jaye Ford’s Beyond Fear, Dawn Barker’s Fractured and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, you’re going to love Dark Horse. It’s quite a ride. I would have read it in one sitting, if I hadn’t had to sleep. I curled up in front of a glowing slow combustion stove and, while the weather went crazy outside, was swept into the drama. Brown has a style that I love: it’s immediate, the descriptions are fresh, the action is urgent. I could almost feel the Victorian alpine hills crowding in, felt every bump and jerk of the heroine’s ride up the mountain on her endurance-trained horse, held my breath at the enormity of what she faced going up, when she reached the summit and going down again. It’s that kind of book: suspenseful, urgent, adrenaline-pumping.

And it’s clever. I’m used to twists in suspense fiction and I can usually read the signs. This book proved no exception, except I realised I was being played. Every time I anticipated the narrative, there was an unexpected payoff; each time I thought something was unlikely or stretched credulity, it proved well motivated or explained.

It was the perfect read for a rainy day, better than a movie. (Far better than its trailer.)

Do I go away with things to think about? I’m not sure. It ranges over what, to me, is very interesting territory: the extremes of human emotions and behaviour; infidelity; depression/mental illness; the breakdown of relationships; childhood trauma and its effects on the family. It belongs to the “family drama with crime” genre that writers like Wendy James and Caroline Overington are so successfully carving a niche in. It’s edgy. It’s sexy, too. But I’m not sure the degree to which it touched me emotionally and intellectually, or simply thrilled me. (To explore this further would necessitate spoilers.)

What it did do is confirm for me that Australian women psychological suspense writers are right up there among the best in the genre. I’m also glad I have two more Honey Brown books, The Good Daughter and After the Darkness, tucked away for another rainy day.

~

This review counts towards the Australian Women Writers Challenge. It has been reviewed elsewhere for the challenge by Simone at Great Aussie Reads and by Brenda in Goodreads.

]]> http://elizabethlhuede.com/2013/04/21/honey-browns-dark-horse/feed/ 6 elizabethlhuede honey-brown-dark-horse http://elizabethlhuede.com/2013/04/09/on-art-and-motherhood-or-this-is-not-a-romance-the-steele-diaries-by-wendy-james/ http://elizabethlhuede.com/2013/04/09/on-art-and-motherhood-or-this-is-not-a-romance-the-steele-diaries-by-wendy-james/#comments Tue, 09 Apr 2013 08:52:20 +0000 Elizabeth Lhuede http://elizabethlhuede.com/?p=3008 ]]> The Steele Diaries, Wendy James’ second novel, originally published in 2008, has recently been re-released as an ebook by Momentum. It’s a novel I’ve looked forward to reading since I discovered a paperback copy on my local library’s discard table. I’d enjoyed James’ The Mistake when I read it as part of the AWW challenge last year and I was hoping for another compulsive read.

This novel didn’t disappoint, but it was different from what I’d anticipated. The Steele Diaries takes a more considered approach than The Mistake, and it wasn’t till halfway through that I felt compelled to keep on turning pages. Loosely, it covers the same territory: family drama – or “Suburban Noir” – with the possibility of crime. In The Steele Diaries, the story unfolds at a gentler pace and has a more literary feel than The Mistake. In the end, however, it packs a similar punch and is arguably even more thought-provoking.

According to James, who was interviewed by Kirsten Krauth last year, the novel was inspired by “stories of various artists’ and writers’ lives — in particular Joy Hester, Sunday Reed, Sylvia Plath, Vanessa Bell, [and] Angelica Garnett — and their differing experiences of motherhood and childhood”. There’s no glossy, sentimentalising of motherhood here; rather, the depiction of the fraught nature of disappointed dreams and imperfect relationships makes for, at times, uncomfortable and confronting reading.

The drama revolves around three women: Ruth, a middle-aged doctor who has recently lost her father; Zelda, Ruth’s mother, an illustrator of children’s books; and Annie, acclaimed artist, Zelda’s mother. It weaves first person narratives from Ruth and Zelda – Zelda’s section being quite literally a “diary” – with a brief account of a time in Annie’s life, as imagined by Zelda.

While depicting the complex and painful relationships between these mothers and daughters, the story dramatises the pressures which childbearing places on a woman’s creativity, sense of autonomy and mental health. It draws on themes familiar to folk and “fairy” tales, the terror of abandonment and the hinted possibility of a mother’s indifference to her child, an indifference which borders on brutality. Such unsafe – even grotesque – preoccupations are reflected in the Art described in the novel, both in Annie’s paintings and Zelda’s wood-block illustrations, as well as in the narrative. Readers are positioned as eavesdroppers or voyeurs on these women’s private lives, a narrative strategy which creates a self-reflexive meditation on Art as a vehicle for telling unpalatable truths, particularly about women’s “failures” to live up to their own and others’ expectations. In portraying these failures, the story both stretches and tests our capacity to respond with sympathy.

Given the weight of the book’s themes, you’d have to wonder about the covers, both the original – with its face of a beautiful, carefully coiffed woman floating over an Outback scene – and the more recent offering from Momentum, with coy lovers kissing under an umbrella. Both are seriously misleading.

James had something interesting to say to Krauth about book covers and marketing mistakes:

So many novels by women — especially those writing about domestic life — are given covers that don’t quite match the content. My first two novels — one about an infanticide, the other about art and motherhood — were marketed as romances. This misrepresentation certainly doesn’t help establish a readership.

Whatever genre you might call The Steele Diaries, it’s not a romance. Momentum book designers, what were you thinking?

~

This review counts towards Australian Literature Month hosted Kim at Reading Matters (who will donate 50p to the Australian Literacy Foundation for every review of an Australian book during April) as well as Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013.

Honestly? I didn’t know what a love rat was, either, before I read the book, but this story set me straight. It features quite a few love rats, old, young, gay, straight, male, female. They are human beings who, in their search to find The One – a man or woman with whom they might just possibly create a happy life – sometimes behave badly. Most of us, the story hints, have been love rats at one time or another. Love is tricky, but worth searching for.

With the characteristic humour which fans of Shepherd’s previous award-winning and best-selling novels have come to love, Reinventing Rose tells the tale of a newly divorced school teacher from Bookerville, California. After having met her internet lover Scott offline for outrageously good sex, Rose buys a ticket and flies to Sydney to hook up once more with her handsome Aussie hunk. It’s the start of the US summer school holidays and she’s giving her adventurous side full rein. On arrival, however, she discovers Scott’s not only married, but also his wife has a baby. He’s a love rat of the first order, and only too happy to get rid of Rose before she even leaves the airport.

Scott’s betrayal isn’t the only unwelcome discovery Rose makes as we follow her adventures “down under”. Her struggles to reinvent herself as a stranger in a strange land, however, are made a whole lot easier – and funnier! – by her outgoing Aussie flatmates, botoxed beauty editor Carla and artist-cum-trust-fund heiress Sasha, as well as their fiercely independent neighbour and friend, international model Kelly. These girls – women – are drawn with flair and deserve to star in books of their own.

The humour that propels this story wouldn’t have been possible without Shepherd’s inside knowledge of Sydney’s magazine scene. At the back of the book, Shepherd writes:

One of the things I most enjoyed during my years in women’s magazines was working with reader makeovers. There was something thrilling about helping transform women (and sometimes men) of all ages with the right hair, makeup and fashion advice. Often the makeover gave such a confidence boost it led to positive change in both relationships and career.

Here Shepherd emphasises the transformative powers of the makeover, and this is certainly an important element of the story. What strikes me more, however, are the makeover’s comic absurdities which Shepherd depicts with compassionate good humour, along with the seemingly never-ending obsession these women have in their attempts to look beautiful, to fit in, to attract the right kind of mate.

The story has a deeper side, too, as Rose struggles to come to terms with what she learns about her dead father, that her parents’ “happy ever after” was at the cost of him hiding his sexuality. Rose grows in self-awareness as she reconciles herself with and finally accepts what initially she perceives to be his betrayal.

Technically, Reinventing Rose is a well-written novel; told in first-person present tense, it has an engaging, at times laugh-out-loud style that Shepherd’s skill makes appear effortless. Who will enjoy it? Fans of chick lit and humorous romance, and anyone who enjoys fun, feel-good fiction.

~

This book contributes towards my Australian Women Writers 2013 Challenge. My thanks to the author for giving me a copy.

]]> http://elizabethlhuede.com/2013/03/23/reinventing-rose-by-kandy-shepherd-or-the-love-rat-ritual/feed/ 0 elizabethlhuede KandyShepherd_ReinventingRose[3] http://elizabethlhuede.com/2013/03/11/on-not-writing-reviews/ http://elizabethlhuede.com/2013/03/11/on-not-writing-reviews/#comments Mon, 11 Mar 2013 06:23:46 +0000 Elizabeth Lhuede http://elizabethlhuede.com/?p=2858 ]]> Twice in the past month I’ve heard writers criticise reviewers for not writing proper reviews. “Some reviewers take a book and use it as a launching pad to write whatever they want,” one complained over lunch.

I kept my mouth shut.

A day or so later, someone emailed me with a list of questions about the current state of on- and off-line reviewing. As I thought about what to answer, I realised one of the aspects I enjoy most about writing reviews online is the freedom to write what I want about a book. I like to write reflections, discussions, musings – and I like to read them, too. I like it when a reviewer gets personal, when s/he admits to feeling provoked, challenged, crushed and remade by a book. Or awed. Or speechless. Or bored.

But are such pieces reviews?

This question has been bugging me, and might account for why I’ve been reading far more than I’ve been posting reviews lately (or writing). The truth is, I’m not sure I want to write “reviews”. Instead, I want to share my experience. I want to give you a glimpse of how I’ve allowed some books to nest inside me, to brood until something cracks, until I feel a stab that tells me: yes, this book has life; this book will take flight in words, inspired-by-this-author musings – or fall, silent.

Whether others catch a glimpse of those words once they’re out and away, whether my impressions flash bright and beautiful, flicker in the shadows or hide invisible, doesn’t matter. The book lives on because it’s helped make me who I am.

So forgive my silence while words brood.

In the meantime, here are some of the books nesting inside me (a few have been there a while):

• Nicole Watson, The Boundary
• Mary-Rose MacColl, In Falling Snow
• M J Hyland, Carry Me Down
• Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels
• Kirsten McDermott, Madigan Mine
• Lucy Tatman, Numinous Subjects: Engendering the Sacred in Western Culture, An Essay

Do you have books with wings?

Photo by Rodney Weidland (used with permission)

From almost 200 original entries, the Stella Prize judges — writer and critic Kerryn Goldsworthy, author Kate Grenville, actor and creator Claudia Karvan, bookseller Fiona Stager and broadcaster Rafael Epstein — have selected 12 books for the longlist.

In alphabetical order, they are:

• Floundering by Romy Ash (Text Publishing)
• Mazin Grace by Dylan Coleman (UQP)
• The Burial by Courtney Collins (Allen & Unwin)
• The People Smuggler by Robin de Crespigny (Penguin/Viking)
• Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser (Allen & Unwin)
• Sufficient Grace by Amy Espeseth (Scribe Publications)
• The Sunlit Zone by Lisa Jacobson (Five Islands Press)
• Like a House on Fire by Cate Kennedy (Scribe Publications)
• Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)
• The Mind of a Thief by Patti Miller (UQP)
• An Opening by Stephanie Radok (Wakefield Press)
• Mateship with Birds by Carrie Tiffany (Pan Macmillan/Picador)

Criteria for The Stella Prize are that the works be “original, excellent and engaging.” It is an “eclectic longlist,” according to the judges, one “that reflects the breadth of imagination, knowledge and skill in contemporary Australian women’s writing.” The longlist includes works of several genres, including short stories, speculative fiction in verse, fantasy and nonfiction: “stories from the past and from the future; stories of children at risk, of racial tension, of world travel, and of unimaginable danger and loss.” (You can read more about books on the longlist on The Stella Prize website).

Given the interest in books by Australian women by participants in the Australian Women Writers Challenge, it’s surprising to discover that only six out of the 12 books on the Stella Prize longlist have been reviewed for the challenge. (Paula Grunseit gave a wrap-up of some of those reviews on the AWW blog.)

Longlisted books still to be reviewed are:

• Mazin Grace by Dylan Coleman which won the David Unaipon Award in 2011#
• Sufficient Grace by Amy Espeseth, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2009#
• The Sunlit Zone by Lisa Jacobson which was shortlisted for the same prize that year#
• Like a House on Fire by Cate Kennedy
• The Mind of a Thief by Patti Miller and
• An Opening by Stephanie Radok.

#Source: AustLit News

For the Stella Prize judges, these books are “reading treasures,” books that represent the best of the best Australian women’s writing. Their absence from AWW’s review lists suggests that quality books by Australian women still aren’t coming to the attention of readers — even avid readers, like the hundreds of bookbloggers participating in the AWW challenge, readers strongly motivated to discover new works by Australian women.

The Stella Prize aims to help to change that.

The shortlist will be announced on Wednesday March 20, and the prize itself will be awarded in Melbourne on the evening of Tuesday April 16.

Book giveaway: Scribe Publications, in conjunction with AWW, is giving readers a chance to win books by several Scribe authors, including two authors longlisted for the Stella Prize, Cate Kennedy and Amy Espeseth. Details can be found on the Australian Women Writers blog. Entries close on February 28.

*Note: This is a modified version of a blog post which first appeared on HuffPost Books.

With the right kind of mindfulness, William Blake tells us, one can behold infinity in a grain of sand. – Janette Turner Hospital on Harmless

When a writer like Janette Turner Hospital pens a back-cover blurb for another Australian author, I pay attention. What is it about Julienne van Loon’s novella, Harmless, soon to be released by Fremantle Press, which has attracted such a gifted admirer? The snippet from Hospital quoted on the front of the book states: Harmless is “suffused with a tough and totally unsentimental compassion”.

I notice, too, review words like “unsentimental”; it seems to be used often when female literary authors are praised. Sentimentality implies emotional manipulation, and a lack of subtlety and nuance. The term has been used to dismiss the work of a plethora of “female authors”, especially those writing in genres such as romance. But what does “unsentimental” mean? I’m tempted to think it’s code for “writes like a man”, or “give this book a girlie-looking cover at your peril”. It’s praise, but is it gendered praise?

In van Loon’s case, unsentimental certainly doesn’t mean unemotional. Far from it. Nor does it mean she avoids topics commonly associated with so-called “women’s writing”, such as relationships, children and family; it even has a female protagonist. What it might mean is a kind of unflinching courage to face the darkest aspects of human frailty and vulnerability while avoiding pathos or despair.

Harmless is another one of those “devastating” books that has been my privilege to discover through the Australian Women Writers challenge. It tells the story of an eight-year-old girl whose Thai step-mother has just died, and who is on the way to visit her feckless father in prison, accompanied by the dead stepmother’s frail elderly father. This father, who speaks little English and who is fresh off the plane from Bangkok, has no idea where he is or what to do with this child who has unexpectedly been placed in his care; he believed his daughter to be happily married to a good man, and with children of her own.

The two get lost on the way to the prison; they abandon their car on the edge of scrubland and are separated as they wander off to find help. The landscape is desolate, like the lives van Loon portrays; their survival uncertain.

This novel is about people on the fringes of society, “losers” one might say. Issues of race and class are central, but understated. There’s no obvious moral compass given, no superior perspective the reader is invited to occupy from which to judge these people. Rather, the focus is on love, and lack of love, and what might constitute a family.

By the end, I felt wrung out, hurt by the author’s bleak picture of humanity and yet consoled, too.

Who will enjoy this novella? Anyone who relishes subtle and emotionally powerful prose; who is interested in a portrait of contemporary Australian life that doesn’t shy away from issues of social disadvantage; and who can bear the heartbreak.

~

This review counts towards my Australian Women Writers 2013 challenge. My thanks to the publishers for supplying a review copy.

Title: Harmless by Julienne van Loon
Publisher: Fremantle Press, 2013
ISBN: 9781922089045

It’s not the first Harlequin Mills & Boon (HM&B) Australian medical romance I’ve read. Years ago, I enjoyed reading some books by Marion Lennox set in Tasmania. While this book isn’t up to Lennox’s standard, it does have an interesting aspect to recommend it for readers of the genre and those interested in boundary-breaking romance novels. (Note: the following contains spoilers.)

The story – like all good HM&Bs – centres around the hero and heroine, two doctors who specialise in Emergency Medicine. They meet on a transcontinental train on the way to a conference where one, the English hero, Gil, will be the keynote speaker. The heroine, Euphemia, is a doctor with the Royal Flying Doctor Service who has escaped to live life in the Outback after devoting her childhood and young adulthood to helping care for a brother with Down’s Syndrome. As a teenager, Euphemia – or Phemie, as she’s known – had genetic testing and discovered herself to be a carrier of the “translocation trisomy 21 chromosome… [the] defective chromosome usually related to children being born with Down’s” (p 61).

What makes this story stand out from other HM&B romances I’ve read is the conflict which threatens to prevent Gil and Phemie getting together happily. It’s not just the fact he is a career doctor from the other side of the world, although that is an issue. More importantly, it’s that Phemie doesn’t want to risk having children. She fears subjecting a child to the kind of life she led: growing up in the shadow of a sibling with Down’s. Having a heroine who doesn’t want to fall pregnant is a risk for Clark, because, without careful handling, Phemie could seem unsympathetic. By making Phemie protective of her unborn (healthy) child, Clark attempts to retain the romance reader’s sympathy for her, despite the fact that there’s something narcissistic – although very human and understandable – in this kind of fear. But Clark also goes one step further (and earns my admiration): she has Phemie admit, much and all as she loves her brother, she’s not sure she’s up to the sacrifices required of a parent of someone with Down’s.

Clark manages to resolve Phemie’s conflict in a believable (and yes, happy) way. How? By hedging her bets: arranging for an adoption and having Phemie fall pregnant – with the hinted possibility of genetic testing in utero. Phemie and Gil will become parents, possibly of a biologically healthy child – or possibly only of an adopted child. It’s a happy ending, yes, but one that touches on what years ago was a taboo subject for HM&B novels: the possibility of termination.

Despite this interesting issue, this book didn’t grab me. Why? The written expression lets it down. Cliches abound. Some of the cliches are foregrounded in a way that suggests this author knows better. For example, Phemie thinks of Australia as a “wide brown land” not once, but twice. It nearly had me dropping the book. The second time, however, she pulls herself up with a thought (paraphrasing), “Not brown exactly, more like ochre.” Okay, so real people do think of the landscape in the generic terms of a Dorothea Mackeller poem, but I demand more from my fictional characters if I’m to spend time with them. The world Marion Lennox created with one of her stories, set in a coastal village in Tasmania and somehow involving penguins, is still vivid in my imagination, many years later. Good romance writing is out there. Clark’s flacid language, I’d assume, is symptomatic of the time HM&B authors are given to write their books: some are asked to write three or four a year. Not enough time to craft and hone the language but, even so, some of Clark’s clangers are unforgivable; and they do nothing to elevate the genre’s reputation of being the domain of hack writers.

Who will enjoy A Baby For the Flying Doctor? HM&B regular readers and students of romance interested in topics that push the genre’s boundaries.

This review counts towards my Australian Women Writers 2013 challenge.

* “Lucy Clark” is the pen-name for a husband and wife team.

Following a tragic accident, Ella O’Hanlon flees to the other side of the world in an attempt to escape her grief, leaving behind the two people she blames for her loss: Aidan, the love of her life, and Jess, her spoilt half-sister. (From publisher’s summary.)

I felt uneasy through a fair bit of this book. At first I wasn’t sure whether I was being played with, but then I realised the story line is pretty straight forward. It ranges over a number of different points of view and deftly incorporates a variety of styles. There’s the first-person narrative of the brittle main character Ella; the stage-managed diary entries of her narcissistic younger half-sister, Jess; the folksy-jolly emails of her step-brother Charlie; and the heartfelt letters of her estranged husband Aidan.

The aspects that unnerved me, I discovered, were carefully crafted: I was meant to feel that way. Just as I was meant, slowly, to come to see the complexity behind the tragic events that provide the background to this story.

Last year, as part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge, I came across a genre-bending category: “family drama with elements of crime” – the kind that Wendy James and the controversial Caroline Overington do so well. I’m not sure this book fits: it’s perhaps not dark enough; but almost. The story portrays characters who act and react badly, who have been driven to extremes by circumstances, who don’t or can’t always see things from others’ points of view. It’s moving and uneven; uneven not through lack of writerly skill, but because the narrations of the characters – and the characters themselves – aren’t always what they seem.

Who will enjoy The House of Memories? People who love reading about Aussie ex-pats in London and imperfect, blended families; and readers who don’t mind being stretched emotionally in a way that resolves with a sense of hope, if not happiness, at the end.

~

Thanks to the publishers for supplying a review e-copy via NetGalley
The House of Memories, Monica McInerney
Published: September, 2012
Publisher: Penguin Australia, Michael Joseph
ISBN: 9781921518645

The point of view characters are smart – smart ironic, rather than emotionally intelligent. The plot contains lots of twists and turns, most of which I foresaw, apart from those toward the end. By then the narrative had stretched so far into incredulity as it struggled to conform to the demands of the plot – rather than illuminating the lives of the characters – I was no longer engaged emotionally. But I was curious to see how it would wind up.

It’s compelling to read and I’m on record as saying I enjoy this kind of book. In its favour, it has a lot to say about gender politics, the impact of popular culture on the way we think of ourselves and others, the roles we play and how we seek to manage others’ perceptions of us. But its self-conscious irony is wearing: like the characters, Flynn appears to enjoy being self-consciously derivative. Derivative of derivative of derivative which is so post- postmodern. Or passe?

Mostly, it’s not an honest book. It reminds me more of playing a game than reading. Fun in a “can’t take my eyes off the accident as we pass” kind of way. It doesn’t make me want to rush out and read more of Flynn’s work, but when I’m in the mood for another suspense or thriller I just may.

First some background about the Australian Women Writers Challenge for those who may be coming across this initiative for the first time.

The Australian Women Writers Challenge (AWW) was established in 2012 to draw attention to the gender imbalance of reviewing in Australia’s literary pages and to do something towards redressing this imbalance. It caused a social media sensation by generating links to over 1500 reviews, and attracting national and international attention. It has now entered its second year, with a team of 15 book bloggers curating it. While the original objective of helping to overcome gender bias remains, it also now seeks actively to support and promote books by Australian women.

Although the challenge was a great success, feedback to a recent survey suggests its approach had shortcomings. At least one (male) participant commented that he wouldn’t be signing up for the challenge again, principally because it had – according to him – become an exercise of “ignoring” books written by Australian men. Others, only recently hearing about the challenge, claimed they wouldn’t be signing up because they are male. (It’s only for women, right?) This perception is obviously widely held: stats show AWW participants are, overwhelmingly, female.

How do we attract more male readers and reviewers? How do we overcome the belief, held by some, that the challenge is for women, by women, or – worse – that it’s anti-male?

Far from AWW being about ignoring books by men, its longer term aim is to make itself redundant, to help create an atmosphere of reading and reviewing equality in which positive discrimination for either gender is unnecessary.  The willingness of some participants to create this equal space is evident in various 2012 wrap up posts; several female participants have noted that the challenge has made them more aware of the need to promote and support all Australian writers, not just women. Historian Yvonne Perkins from Stumbling Through the Past has declared her support for all Australian writers of histories; Shaheen of Speculating on Speculative Fiction aims to read and review an equal number of male and female writers in 2013; while Tsana Dolichva from Tsana Reads wants to promote more Australian Horror and Science Fiction, regardless of gender.

Could there be room for another challenge – a “male writers challenge” – one that makes “male” a visible category rather than the norm?

Last night on Twitter when I put this idea forward for discussion, I could almost hear the gasps of protest. Wouldn’t such a challenge be, at best, a step back to the gender-imbalanced status quo; at worst, a capitulation, pandering to male readers, writers and reviewers whose noses are out of joint at AWW’s success, allowing them to make the challenge about them? Why would I support – let alone establish – such a challenge? Doesn’t it go against my original premise?

I can understand those fears. And I acknowledge it would be a gamble. But, for me, marginalisation of women’s writing in Australia is not only due to gender bias, and overcoming gender bias in male reviewers is more complex than simply issuing an invitation to read – or coercing them into reading – more books by women.

The lack of visibility of women writers in Australian literary review pages has to do with genre as well as gender. If the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012 is anything to judge by, the books women are reading, and reviewing online – and probably buying and borrowing from the library – are overwhelmingly Fantasy, Romance, commercial popular fiction, Young Adult fiction and Children’s fiction, along with some – but not many – well-known crime or thriller authors. In most of these genres, women are doing well; yet they don’t all make it to the literary review pages, or First Tuesday Book Club discussions, for example, or Radio National’s Books and Arts Daily. Nor are these genres, I’d hazard, that the Stella Prize committee seeks to champion (even though it is ostensibly open to all genres). The Stella Prize was established to counteract the bias that favoured men in recent Miles Franklin Awards: it aims for fair recognition and acknowledgement for female literary writers, the best of the best, the “finest” writing (which, in Australia, hasn’t always meant a very readable “story”). Participants in the Australian Women Writers Challenge have helped the Stella’s aims by creating a community of readers who read and review lots of books by women, regardless of genre, with many literary books thrown in: not by focusing on the “literary”. The men who participated in the 2012 challenge, with a couple of exceptions (including the disgruntled one), didn’t read literary books, for the most part: they read Speculative Fiction and some crime, with one brave reviewer throwing in some Romance, almost as a dare. They read the books whose stories they thought they’d enjoy, given their reading preferences.

My thought is this: rather than fight against male readers’ lack of interest in reading books by Australian women, why not work with it? First find the readers via a challenge that attracts them, see what they enjoy – whether its genre fiction or something more literary. Then, include them among a broader social media reading community, and recommend good books by women, great stories that suit their tastes. At the same time, we’d be helping to support and promote male Australian genre writers who, it could be argued, also suffer genre bias against their work. By helping to create an Australian Male Writers reading and reviewing challenge – and perhaps a tandem “Australian Writers” challenge that promotes reviewing of an equal number of books by men and women – we could find future potential participants for AWW.

This strategy – perhaps as ambitious and unlikely to succeed as some AWW participants on Twitter decried it to be – might also help to address another problem, one that Cameron Woodhead raised on Tara Moss’ blog back in 2011. It was his comment on Moss’s now-famous post, in which she recapped a recent Sisters In Crime conference, that led indirectly to the creation of the AWW challenge. When Moss mentioned the issue of gender bias in reviewing, and Women in Literary Arts’ VIDA count, Woodhead remarked, “According to latest ABS data, women are 4% more likely than men to have sufficient prose literacy to cope with life in a knowledge-based economy.” After someone (male) criticised him for calling Moss’s stance “privileged whining”, Woodhead went on, “If you’re educated enough to understand and in a position to care about this subject, you’re privileged by definition. Unlike the 4% more Australian men than women who can’t even read a book.” Burying himself even deeper, as far as most of the other commentators were concerned, Woodhead declared: “Am I to deduce that you care more about the underrepresentation of female authors in literary awards than you do about the preponderance of illiteracy among Australian males?”

These are actually (dare I say it?) fair points, although misappropriate and offensive appearing in the context of Moss’s blog. But what if the two are connected: the marginalisation of women writers and Australian males’ comparatively poor literacy? What if adult males’ poorer literacy is in part due to a lack of awareness of books that appeal to them? Books with easy-to-read good stories which are aimed at adults, not children. Books like… genre fiction. By promoting – and valuing – genre fiction, might we not encourage both male and female children to keep reading into adulthood, rather than coming to see reading as a “worthy pursuit” which they rarely, if ever do, but which they associate with the kind of reading they had to do in high school, Capital “L”, “Literature”? I’m speaking, by the way, as an ex-tutor of creative writing at tertiary level, who heard one student admit not to having read a book since Looking for Alibrandi when she was 14. Literary books didn’t interest her, fair enough – but to enter adulthood with no reading? Instead, such students opted to spend their leisure seeing movies, playing computer games, or hanging out on social media; if they did read, it was magazines.

And the consequence? They were inundated by images and storylines that weren’t a reflection of their own lived experience, or the experience of Australian lives around them, or created by the imagination of their fellow Australians of all backgrounds and gendered positions. By combating genre bias, in addition to gender bias, we could help to capitalise on the success of last year’s National Year of Reading and prevent this kind of abandonment of reading from happening to a future generation, and perhaps influence for the better adult males’ poorer literacy. We could help to build an adult Australian reading community which loves reading books, good stories, because they’re as interesting and exciting to read as anything they read as kids. (That such a strategy might also help the literacy levels of Indigenous readers, those of a lower socio-economic background or limited schooling, or children and adults with a first language other than English is also important, but not my focus here.)

Would such an endeavour detract from the aims of The Stella Prize and the original premise of the Australian Women Writers challenge? I don’t think so. Fine writing, combined with a riveting story, won’t be overlooked – such books may even attract more mainstream attention.

The alternative?

At best, the Australian Women Writers Challenge will have a positive impact, helping books by Australian women receive the attention they deserve. At worst, it will be more of the same. Literary books that may or may not attract reviews by male reviewers. Women (and a few men) reading books by women; both men and women reading books by men. And publishing houses like Random House Australia listing at the top of their “Top 10 Australian Bestsellers 2012″ two books by Americans: Deborah Rodriguez and James Patterson. Why? Why else? Unless our own fine genre writers are comparatively invisible. Genre bias – as well as gender bias – is alive and well in Australia, and it doesn’t impact only on women.

So what do you think? Is there room for another Australian reading and reviewing challenge?