One of the best gigs I ever had was reviewing books for our local newspaper although I was not paid a cent for my reviews. Each week, the Books Editor would send out a list of new releases to the stable of reviewers who could ask for the books we wanted to review on a first-come-first-served basis. We would make our way to the newspaper office where we would pick up whichever books we had chosen. I called it The Book of the Month Club although some months I read far more than one book. Given the free nature of the books, I was willing to take a chance on books or genres I might not otherwise read—and in so doing discovered some amazing gems.
This month I had a similar experience: when my literary agent suggested I give the fiction bestseller list a try, I was introduced to a whole new group of writers and titles.
One thing I think made me a good book reviewer is being both a writer and a reader. I know how much work and passion goes into writing any book. It might only take two or three hours to read a book that might easily have taken months or years to write. A reviewer’s words can stab like a knife between the ribs. (I’ve been there. For all the “Reading this book was a special experience” comments, I’ll always remember the person who said of one of my novels, “Where’s the drama, the scandal, the thrill? I suppose I am used to fantasy and drama in the books I read.” A friend describes this phenomenon as “it would have been better with zombies.”) At the same time, books aren’t cheap and a reader’s time is valuable so a good reviewer has an obligation to tell the truth to help potential readers make their choices.
I came at this reading the bestsellers project with both reader and writer hats on, too. I’m no snob when it comes to reading— I think people should read the kinds of books they most enjoy and that life is too short to finish bad books and to start books that don’t appeal—but the bestseller list is just never where I start finding books to read. Aside from algorithms on book-selling sites (“If you liked x, you might like y”), I tend to find books from like-minded readers online and in person.
When it comes to writing, however, I have to admit I might be more of a snob. I like the words of the novelist Toni Morrison who said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” That’s how I’ve always written: the books I want to read rather than ones written to the market.
My agent once told me what was selling best was what’s known as bonnet fiction – gentle fiction about the Amish—and wondered whether I might want to take a stab at it myself, to write to the market. I live in an area that has many Amish and Mennonite people within it but proximity didn’t give me the right to write about a culture that wasn’t my own, I thought. I wasn’t sure I could pull it off in a way that had integrity. (Interestingly, now after finishing a theology degree at a Mennonite university, I am writing a book where the narrator is a young conservative Mennonite woman. My heart is in my throat knowing that the cultural concerns remain. I will get sensitivity readers for this novel.)
But this reading experiment put my writing prejudices to the test. It was a way of asking: what do people enjoy reading? Is there overlap between that and what I write? What can I learn from what is selling like hotcakes? Is it integrity or is it ignorance on my part? Am I making the assumption that bestsellers are the literary equivalent of junk food?
I would find out.
What I will say about the first book I read is that Oprah liked it. But even Oprah described it as escapist. As I read the romance, although the characters are not in high school, it reminded me of how I felt about romance and boys at that age. It also was about characters who’ve been through hard things and experience healing and restored relationships and a true happily ever after. But what struck me most about the book was the dialogue and descriptions, both of which seemed to be blow by blow. The effect was to feel like I was hearing every single word and seeing every single thing that happened. It felt like I was being invited to enter an alternative reality, a fantasy world. It was a big ah-ha for me who writes books about characters who wrestle with tough questions and their own interior life to remember that sometimes readers have challenging lives and they just want a little escape, a little fantasy, the hot guy from years ago to come back, seasoned like fine wine. I didn’t love the book but it was a nice escape in the same way that perhaps a Hallmark Christmas movie is a nice escape. And people need a break. That was a good reminder.
The second book I read was The Maid by Nita Prose. This was much more up my alley. I loved the premise – a hotel maid is essentially an invisible person who can thus see and do things under the radar. The author works as an editor and created fabulous quirky characters. It was no A Gentleman in Moscow (a glorious novel set in a hotel) and no Eloise (a delightful children’s series about a hotel-dwelling child) but it had a terrific narrator’s voice, a wonderful pace, and great techniques for revealing and concealing plot. I was really sad, therefore, when this book didn’t stick the landing. Instead it made some shocking moves plot-wise and shifted into fantasy territory in a way that lessened the book for me. Still I gobbled it up like popcorn and found myself reading chapters in spare moments because it was just that compelling. I haven’t read the sequel yet but despite my reservations I still think this was a worthwhile read and I will likely look for the next in the series. What I take away from it as a writer is a reminder of bringing bright energy to pacing, voice and plotting. I believe the author had fun writing this one and the reader has that fun in the discovery too.
The third book I embarked on is Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. Oprah is also a fan of this novel and author. It’s a story with multiple overlapping voices who take turns telling a story much the way family members might tell a well-known legend from their past. This makes sense because the book is about a tight-knit group of four sisters and the people in their immediate circle. One character new to the cirlce says of them, “they conducted a kind of love that seemed voluminous. It required talking over one another and living on top of each other and it was a force that appeared to include people both present and absent, alive and dead.” The story takes place over decades although there are a few jumps in time, and it mostly takes place in a neighbourhood in Chicago. The sisters reference their love for the novel, Little Women, and I feared that this might be yet another modern-day retelling of another work of fiction, but Napolitano avoids that for the most part. Like the first book I read in this experiment, the experience of Hello Beautiful is immersive so that I did feel I was living in the small details and large events of the family’s life. This book is strong all the way through with patterns emerging and plot lines converging in ways that surprised me but also had a beautiful sense of inevitability. I came away feeling tender toward the world, kinder and softer. I did not cry and I did not laugh out loud but this book did get me in my feelings. In hindsight I can be a bit more critical—there is a token friend who is a person of colour, 9/11 and its aftermath is entirely omitted by characters who live in NYC at the time, and there is a fairy tale-like quality to the lives of the characters—but I loved how the author took a quite formulaic story, broke it open and then found a way to repair it that reminded me of kintsugi – the art of mending broken pottery with gold. In this book, quite explicitly, the gold is love, and loving people for who they are.
I intended to read more from the bestseller list (I have a Kristin Hannah novel on my Kindle waiting) but the books were not short and in between reading them, I got sidetracked by reading Woman, Watching, a fascinating genre-defying book by Merilyn Simonds that is mostly a memoir of a woman named Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, a birder who lived in northern Ontario through the 20th century. I also read two books by Laurie R. King – Back to the Garden and The Lantern’s Dance. The second of these grew on me as it is one of her Sherlock Holmes-and-his-wife mysteries but neither of them were as readable as the popular books nor as interesting as the quirky Woman, Watching.
So what do I learn as a writer from this experiment? Or as a reader? I remember what Louise Penny said about how she began writing. In 1996, she walked away from an 18-year career as a journalist and radio host, convinced she was going “to write the best book ever.” Five years later, the historical novel she was writing was utterly stalled and instead she was “watching a lot of Oprah and eating a lot of gummy bears.” (Three mentions of Oprah in one essay!) She said her breakthrough came when she decided to start writing the kind of books she loves to read: mysteries. She describes the process as one of relaxing into being herself.
I’m not sure any of these books are ones that are likely the type to sit on my bedside table or to be the kinds of books I’d like to read. But Penny’s words remind me of a line from a song that often comes back to me. The song is called “Let Go” by the duo Frou-Frou. The line is “too busy writing your tragedy.” The tone of the song is gently, kindly ironic and it’s one I need to hear. The chorus says instead,
“Let go, yeah let go, just get in
Oh, it’s so amazing here, it’s alright
‘Cause there’s beauty in the breakdown.”
The reading experiment showed me that in a challenging world what many readers are looking for is less a mirror to their tragedy and more of a comedy in the broadest sense of the word. I also think there’s escape and then there’s escape: such books can be written well or they can be a kind of teenage fantasy.
Many of my books have some really fun secondary characters—think Honey in Renaissance. In my daily life – in the voices I create for my two dogs, for instance – I have a lot of humour. When I sit down to write, I never think I need to write tragey or even Serious Fiction. But I am reminded of a couple of experiences.
Lectio divina is an exercise where a person reads a small portion of text (usually a piece of a sacred text) multiple times, listening first for what jumps out, then for what memory is evoked, third for what invitation is given and finally to simply rest in the awareness of the words and the process. Nearly always what jumps out for me is the tragedy, the gloomy, the hard, but then what follows is surprisingly (to me) joyful. Many people start with a “fine thanks” surface and then go into the hard stuff, but it’s almost always reversed for me. I’m happier than I think I am.
I also recall being part of a painting class during a tough time in my life and at the end of a particularly hard week. I grimly laughed, saying I would paint my canvas black because that would express my mood. And I did. But then I found myself adding a little purple and a little navy and by the end, I had painted a firebird of a woman emerging out of the darkness, all the colours aflame and a mysterious moon above her. I could not stay in the tragedy any more than the readers of popular fiction seem to be able to.
How do I bring this awareness to my writing? If I sit here and ponder the question, I’ ‘llslip back into the tragic introspective energy rather than the energy of the opening lines: “I am your maid. I’m the one who cleans your hotel room, who enters like a phantom when you’re out gallivanting for the day, no care at all about what you’ve left behind, the mess or what I might see when you’re gone.”
I don’t imagine I’ll be Louise Penny discovering a whole new genre and I can’t quite see myself writing escapist books but I suspect there might be something in moving toward the witty voices, the imagined plotlines, the fun energy and the love of these books…and of my imagined versions of my dogs.
As the younger of my dogs says about being good, “It isn’t as easy as it looks.” She’d agree with Frou Frou too, though – whatcha waiting for? Jump in.
I just might.
Susan Fish 