YOU CAN'T READ THIS!

I have recently published my debut novel The Sum of all Parts, and I have been lucky enough to have done a few interviews and to have spoken with a handful of people who have read my book. What surprised me - let's be honest here, what annoyed me - is a handful of people (interviewers and readers, male and female) have said to me that The Sum of all Parts is obviously a book for female readers of a certain age (that is, my age) only. Why? Because the book is written by a woman, the main character is a woman, and the narrators (six in total) are all female. Let me clarify: according to this handful of interviewers and readers, a book written by a woman about a woman should only be read by women. By this skewed reasoning a detective novel can only be read by those in law enforcement, murder mysteries by murderers, Sci-Fi by - what? Elves? Wizards? Inter-galactic space travellers?

If we choose to agree that women authors should only be read by women, then it also follows that male authors should only be read by men. Looking at my bookshelves alone that means I am going to lose a lot of wonderful books purely because I am a woman, books written by amazing male authors and books which all spoke to me in one way or another. Let's get this in perspective, by this female author - female readers only argument, I have to remove from my bookshelf works of fiction by Douglas Adams, Mitch Albom, H.E Bates, John Boyne, Peter Carey, Harlan Coben, Eoin Colfer, Wilkie Collins, Joeseph Conrad, Bernard Cornwall, Charles Dickens, Roddy Doyle, Andre Dubus III, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ken Follett, E. M Forster, Neil Gaiman, Moshin Hamid, Thomas Hardy, Nick Hornby, Khaled Hosseini, Victor Hugo, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ma Jian, James Joyce, Brian Keenan, Garrison Keillor, D.H. Lawrence, Brian Lynch, Michael Morpugo, David Nicholls, George Orwell, Terry Pratchett, Phillip Pullman, Ellery Queen, Peter Rushforth, J.D. Salinger, Anthony Sher, Lionel Shriver, John Steinbeck, William Makepeace Thackeray, Paul Theroux, James Thurber, J.R.R. Tolkien, P.G. Wodehouse, and Richard Yates. And that's just the male authors on my shelves, there are many more (and yes, my bookshelves are in alphabetical order).

And by the same argument, think of all the fiction by female authors that men would not be reading - Kate Atkinson, Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, Clare Boylan, the Bronte sisters, Tracy Chevalier, Agatha Christie, Jill Dawson, Daphne Du Maurier, Pettina Gappah, Barbara Kingsolver, Harper Lee, Ursula Le Guin, Olivia Manning, Geraldine McCaughrean, Stephanie Meyer, Maggie O'Farrell, Jodi Picoult, Marilynne Robinson, Ruth Rendell, Arundhati Roy, Alice Sebold, Carol Shields, Amy Tan, Elizabeth Taylor, Flora Thompson, Anne Tyler, Salley Vickers, Alice Walker, Edith Wharton, Antonia White - I could go on. On a side note - I'm a woman and most of my fiction is written by men: does this mean men are more prolific writers than women, or - shock - women can enjoy and relate to literature by men?

But let's not get distracted, let's get back to the original topic of discussion: women should only read books written by women. I think I've found a flaw in the argument. Some of these male authors write from a female perspective, so does that mean, for example, I can keep Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the Durbervilles, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Lionel Shriver's We've Got to Talk About Kevin? And by the same argument, do I lose female author's who write from a male perspective - Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie books, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, Jill Dawson's The Great Lover, Salley Vicker's Mr Golightly's Holiday?

It's all getting rather silly isn't it?

I concede, The Sum of all Parts will definitely resonate with the female reader, but that doesn't mean that it won't resonate with male readers too: the fact that it's written by a woman about a woman should not preclude men from reading, enjoying, or relating to the story. Men know women - they have mothers, sisters, friends, partners, colleagues - so why should it be assumed that they won't enjoy my book, won't relate to any of it's themes? After all, the themes explored in The Sum of all Parts aren't solely female - mental health, relationship issues, abuse, these can happen to anyone regardless of gender. A book should be read because you like the sound of it, because the book blurb entices you, the first page has you spellbound: gender shouldn't come into it.

I wonder how my work in progress will fare (assuming of course that it gets published) given this need to assign readers for books - and yes, I am aware that demographics are important when it comes to book sales and publicity, but let's just not go too crazy. My work in progress is set in a fictional corner of Ireland and has a full cast of characters: young and old, male and female, straight and gay, ill and healthy. Does that mean then that anyone can read it? Ah, a problem - my two main characters are female, one elderly and one a goddess from Irish mythology. I'm not sure I'm going to find readership from the latter category. There go my book sales...

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