RARA-AVIS: Women rewriting

From: Nathalie M觥 ( nmege@club-internet.fr)
Date: 27 May 2000


Mark incidently asked:

> And the Jack Early books, was it obvious to readers that they were
> written by a woman before the name was reveal to be a pseudonym?

Knowing Scoppettone was the author, I read (and translated) 'Donato and Daughter', a Jack Early which has 3 POVs, 2 of them male (a cop and a serial killer) and one female (a cop). My feeling was Scoppettone does a very good job with the male cop voice.

Anyway, while reading, i asked myself if one could guess Jack Early was in fact a woman, and the only thing obvious to me was that the author was a feminist. But i'm a woman, so i'm probably biased.

BTW A clue that can you make recognize SS: I've noticed that in almost all her books, she has a scene where a POV character sees a cop/detective/whoever is in a mostly 'male' line of work … and when the dialogue begins, we're shocked to realize the POV character is in fact talking to a woman.

(...)

> I've also wondered if, in general, women might not be better at writing
> from a male point of view than men from a female, simply because the
> male point of view has been so hegemonic and women have been forced to
> work within it for so long that they can ape it, while men have been
> more able to ignore the alternative.

I quite agree with that. With the enormous female production of the last 10-15 years in the crime fiction field, the trend might be reversed soon, though. <G>

NM

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