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Okay, ladies, we need to talk. The review space for this book is going to get the brunt of something it probably doesn't deserve, but is a good example and there there is something that I just don't understand that we need to clear up. Dudes, I suppose that you can offer your opinions, but I'm not sure that you'll have as many answers to all of my questions.

So I've read a lot of romance novels over the course of my life. Starting far too early, I've been reading the fantasies of grown-ass women written in the 80s and 90s, fantasies that came out the other end of many years of life lived, gendered, sometimes historically fucked up and repressed in a way that I couldn't begin to understand as a pre-teen, with no exposure whatsoever to this sort of shit. It was a weirdly post-modern experience in the most literal sense- I turned on the porn in the fourth act without any idea of the beginning or end of it and how we got there and thought that this was the way that it was. It took me a lot more time than it should have to figure out that this was not the only way it was or possibly should be. It was pretty much a ragefest when I slowly, and then all at once, figured all of that out.

It's been a number of years, but I've got another ragefest simmering, and once again, its over a group of books written by women, I would imagine largely for women (sadly), rooted deeply in the imagination of women. I may be slightly more equipped to understand it, but still find myself sputtering. I'll try to articulate as best I can, though.

Here goes:

I have read a large, but growing group of books with female protagonists who make my skin crawl in a growing, but then finally undeniable way, to the point that I am forced to put the book down. The Lantern was the first example where I was able to put a finger on it. But there have been more. This book was a huge example. I just tried to read The Husband's Secret and it was exactly the same shit. Whitehouse's House at Midnight had it blatantly at the beginning and then was run through with a more sinister, belowground version of it through the rest of the book. Jane Green's books do it, some of Emily Giffin's do.

The major thing that all these books have in common a female protagonist who opens the book trying to prove herself to us, from the first page. She will insinuate or outright tell us, over and over again over the course of the first few chapters (and throughout the book in case you forget) that her heroine is superior to those around her.

Well sure, you might say. All books need to get us connected to their heroes and make us interested in their story. That seems reasonable.

And I agree with you- but not in this case. Because the way these books establish this connection is through this nasty, gendered way that's sometimes perfectly blatant and straightforward, and more awfully, done largely through the use of code words and subconscious dog whistles that I would sometimes imagine that the author isn't even aware they are using. They are the sort of words that you absorb and feel eager to repeat because you know they gain approval and are a natural part of the landscape of the kind of books you write- like how good female characters' "eyes dance" and sympathetic protagonists always "arch their eyebrows" to show their sardonic, likeable humor in fantasy novels. It's an instantly recognizable, subconscious code to anyone who has ever read the genre- relax around this character. Breathe easy. This is one of us.

And it's these books' horrible idea of what "one of us" means that is just killing me. The code for "one of us" that these books push is wrapped up in this deeply fucked up mess of capitalistic, traditional feminine, societal and high-school-code status symbols that would be fascinating to untangle if they weren't so awful.

Here's a typical mix of how it goes:

Capitalistic: In the first few chapters, we'll be treated to a demonstration of the characters' wealth and status. Usually this involves a recitation of various expensive, luxury brands and expensive objects that she has access to. Usually there is some Puritan excuse about how she married into this wealth, or got it from someone else, or how she has worked her whole life in comparison to her layabout family. If she doesn't have wealth, either she will spend the whole book being superior to those characters who do have wealth, or will appreciate it in a nice "if only I could have it" wistfully annoying way- and be sure she will be awarded it by the end of the novel, all the while protesting that she "would rather have had....." (blah blah blah morally superior thing). I have no literal idea what books want to accomplish with this- giving us the aspirational fantasy we want, but still ascribing to its reader the work ethic that will reassure us that it is okay for us to want it? Is this a "celebrities they're just like us!" moment- we're delighted to be brought into the orbit of such a high status woman and, like the popular girl on the playground choosing to talk to us, we'll be so delighted to have the privilege to be inside her mind, we'll attach to her immediately because she gave us that honor? I'd say maybe it was an American thing, but I've seen it in British novels as well- sometimes even more blatantly.

Ah, and then there's the misogynistic, high-school-mean-girl shit. Even worse. We are constantly treated to descriptions of what these girls look like and what they are wearing- we are told about it every time they change clothes- every time their hair is out of place. And I guarantee you we're going to get words like "slender"/"thin"/"she didn't have a perfect body but she'd never had trouble attracting a man"- and, of course- "she wasn't model thin like those blonde girls who sat at the popular table in high school, but she was...." (blah blah blah morally superior). It's all about the girl on girl crime. In The Husband's Secret, within twenty pages, the main character had bitchily taken down most of her friends with one catty swipe of claws and established her and her family's superiority to them. Often this is done by sheer comparison of description and the adjectives chosen, added up. Like... I don't know... this is supposed to speak to my deep-seeded sense that I am really better than all my friends? Especially if they are pretty- if we have to have the almighty crime of admitting that they are prettier than us, then they have to suffer. They will be dumb, mean, selfish, ambitious, rude, sexual in a "distasteful" way (probably coming on to your husband or being "indiscriminate" in her tastes), have a difficult personality that "only appeals to some", be an actual angel come to earth that all of us can make fun of in our heads for thinking unicorns exist or whatever. How fucking DARE they be prettier than us- don't worry, we'll provide you with a reason to hate them. That is if any other woman is allowed to have an image at all. Get off the stage, I am the fairest of them all.

But most of the time other women are on stage- because these books- it's like a constant game of one-upsmanship in a very specifically female way. Our protagonists have to come out on top in comparison to other females, even if only by implication (and of course the protagonist would never think of it that way! But she's rewarded with that victory anyway). Everything that happens- the plot she's involved in, her observations and interactions with other women and especially her romance- all read like points on a scoreboard. These are not books about personal transformation except on the most surface level, and usually only in the service of getting one of these status-y things. These books read as competition, like some sort of fantasy of jealousy, of being the person that others envy- all with the excuse of moral superiority that just happens to grant you all the high status stuff that you wanted.

It's gross. It so often reads like a shy girl's fantasy come to life- someone who would have wanted to be queen bee and be just as bitchy as that blonde girl, but never had the balls to actually do it, and so constructed an idea of themselves based around being morally superior to it, while all the while wishing they could be part of it. It's sick- it's the worst feelings that girl-on-girl envy can produce, and what's worse, I am expected to identify with them. It's a martyrdom complex taken to an extreme. It is a childish emotional depth that I cannot accept.

What the actual fuck, ladies? Like... is this a genre thing? Is this still the leftovers of all the competition that women felt they had to do for men, because they thought they were the key to survival in the world (and still think this)? Is this something we're going through the motions of and have gotten to the point where we fill in an out-of-date formula and don't even realize what we're doing?

It's like women still trying to prove how "normal" and "likeable" they are by spitting out a bunch of words that they think do that- isn't this what I'm supposed to want?? Do you love me yet?? Do you approve of my totally normal, not weird beautiful character who is better than everyone?? Is this what you wanted from me? Why are we still trying to please men and judgmental women who were never going to like you anyways??

It's sad and gross all at once.

And no, I don't think that this is a case of really good characterization. I see this too much. Either something has infected this genre- too often and grossly called "middlebrow" fiction- or there's something going on that we haven't confronted. I don't accept that this is what we honestly want out of our protagonists, ladies. It can't be. Can it?

Especially because it is so desperately fake- that's what I saw in the Lantern. There was a fascinating person with interesting ideas (or the start of them anyway) behind that woman who put on a fake feminine voice and flashed her diamond ring and big house-porny house at the beginning to let us know we should envy her. Why the eff are we leading with that diamond flashing woman all the time? House at Midnight did it too- I haaaaattteeeed protagonist at the beginning. Could we talk more about how middle class she was and how all her friends were super rich and classy and amazing and went to Oxford?? Oh please, can we?? And then the rest of the book, her relationship with her boyfriend was basically just a show to generate jealousy, and based on an attraction that seemed to be based on nothing at all that we're actually shown. But, again, there were some moments of truth in the book- again, towards the end, once she seemed sure that she had us and we weren't going anywhere. They peeked out here and there. I couldn't even get past this lead-in with Before We Met- maybe it would have been the same here.

Why do we think this is what we need to get women to invest in other women characters? Why do we need to envy them or hate them? Or at the very least be super smug about relating to them? (I'm not talking about identifying- which is different and more truthful. I'm talking about blatant ploys for readers to insert themselves like talking about how they were never one of the popular girls or can't believe they ended up with this gorgeous husband, surely he will leave me.)

I've sort of noticed this for awhile, but I think that part of my anger about this was that I thought I had discovered a subset of the genre where I was safe from all this. I have since discovered that it has a name- "chick noir." Which I HATE. Please let me be clear about how much I HATE that. But at least it put together a group of books that I was almost invariably interested in. As far as I can work out, the label seems to mean that the book is probably some type of psychological thriller, focused on a woman, probably having a lot of domestic backgrounds and settings, probably involving a romantic relationship of some kind. (Hence the horrible "chick" I assume.) But my favorite part of the genre has absolutely been the amazing main character females and the fact that we get to spend a whole lot of time inside their heads because of the psychological thriller part. Gone Girl and Gillian Flynn's other novels are probably the best examples of this fledgling drama, but there are other ones. Tana French's The Likeness would count as one of them, too. I just finished Sacrifice by SJ Bolton, I'd put it in there too. I found them an honest relief. Barely a flicker of the tangled mass of handed down feminine horror show shit that had characterized these other books (unless it was briefly organic to the plot or character development)- sometimes I didn't even know what the woman looked like! And guess what? it couldn't matter less to the plot if I did or not. And I was totally enthralled with being inside their heads- usually they were smart, smart-alecky, and smartly constructed messes of actual human beings.

What a fucking relief.

But you know what I've discovered, reading reviews of these books? That people seem absolutely offended by these characters' refusal to perform the usual feminine rituals of self-hatred, self-abnegation, to provide us with words that are supposed to make our brains light up with envy, of giggling behind our hands at some other woman, telling us how beautiful the character is to give her currency when she does bad things. Of course, especially in the Gillian Flynn novels, the main characters ARE deeply fucked up, and often this is in direct engagement with their feminine societal roles, or in direct reaction to it. I'm not asking anyone to like these characters- but what I was shocked by were reviews calling characters "sociopathic" for refusing to perform these rituals.

Is anyone else watching that show UNreal, yet? About the backstage drama at a "Bachelor" like show? If not, I don't know if I can recommend it- but I can assure you that it is among the most fucked up shit I have ever seen. The whole show is about women doing horrible things to each other, often in the service of a male presence who is barely even there, but they are always aware of in the back of their mind- they only make their presence felt occasionally, but that's all they need to do to send these women back into the most horrible spirals. They don't even need to be there for women to act on their behalf. And the women running the show KNOW what the worst things they can do each other are. It's the worst gendered horror I've seen in awhile.

I don't get it. Why do we like watching other women, fictional or not, do this? Why are we reading books about it? Why do we allow ourselves to subconsciously code characters in this way and reject characters who don't follow it?

I think this is part of the reason I've loved, to no end, Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels so much. For not a second, for not an actual second, does that narrator of those books put on a pose for me, the reader. Oh, she does to those around her and a lot of what she goes through is about feminine role construction, but not to me. not to me the reader. It feels like these characters that I complain about are doing it to me, the reader. That's, in the end, I think what infuriates me the most. It's like these books, these authors, stopped halfway. Yes, all these things these characters do and say happen and people feel this way- but why? And please stop, please stop giving me those stupid pop psychology answers and easy outs like we always get.

And I'm not just citing pretentious European literature and trying to compare apples to oranges. Emily Giffin's Something Borrowed tried to engage with this status fight thing by at least acknowledging it- her character was the embodiment of this female status envy. She bought into it a bit in a way that was not helpful, but it was transfixing to watch because of it. There are others that do the same- even Plum Sykes' Bergdorf Blondes, which was all about labels and brand names at least had an honest heart to it that made the labels all so much comedy.

A line I will never forget from a romance novel, written in the early 2000s- it's from the fourth or fifth in one of those family romance series, where there are several siblings and each book is about one member of the family finding their true love or whatever. The love interest is being introduced to the wider family for the first time and the love interests from the previous three novels appear to pick up their children and kiss their men after some sort of Christmas performance. The character observes something to the effect of:

"Here they were, three shining angels, each one more beautiful than the last, sunbeams shining in the eyes of women who have found their true places in the world."

It's said with envy and longing, and is the occasion for the new protagonist to go into the depths of self-hatred and darkness and turn around all the more determined to prove herself to her big, handsome man and prove to him, and to us the reader, that she is just as worthy of love as those "beautiful angels". And she totally does- putting herself in unreasonable mortal danger with her PTSD diagnosed paramour for no reason whatsoever other than the deep feelings of inferiority these women inspired.

I'm just so over it. Maybe someone can explain it to me and tell me why the sorts of books I'm describing are appealing. I mean, is it in the same way that celebrity gossip sites and fashion police shows after red carpets are? Okay- but then come out with the cattiness. What I can't stand is this thing where we wrap it up in sanctimonious moral superiority and pretend like it's something else so that we can feel better about ourselves. Like... is this really the fantasy we like? We actually want to be these women? Surely not.

More than anything else, I feel like it is a waste. An utter and complete waste- because just like that woman in The Lantern- there are so many more interesting things that we could talk about if we let down our guard for approximately two seconds. Stuff that slips out between the cracks, stuff that we only get to long after you're sure that I won't leave you. It's like the fucking cocktail party with work acquaintances that won't end. Can we do the shots of tequila like two hours earlier to give us all the excuse to be silly and be normal people? Can we stop looking around furtively and looking for the person we're supposed to be impressing?

This is fiction, forgodsakes. Do you really think your readers are like all those people who were mean to you in high school? Do you really think, have you really absorbed that lesson, that this is what people are like?

Let it go. That's what books are for. We get to get away from things and show our true selves.

Otherwise it's not worth it.

Ladies, talk to me. Let's discuss. Explain this shit to me. Because I have had it.