my year of reading women
Dear friends,
Now is the time when some journalists post an ICYMI list to Twitter with the pieces they're most proud of from the past year. I think I've done this maybe once—it seems like a good idea, promotion-wise, but I can never get past the worry that the people who follow me might not want their feeds flooded with my bylines. But as I looked over my list of everything I published in 2019, contemplating whether or not to post the links, I noticed something different about this year. Every book I reviewed was by a woman:
Inheritance by Dani Shapiro, a page-turner of a memoir about DNA testing, paternity, and how much our genes make us who we are
The graphic novelization of Anne Frank's diary, which I loved in many ways but ultimately couldn't forgive for perpetuating the myth that Anne wrote her diary chronologically from start to finish (actually, she revised and rewrote nearly the entire thing just a few months before she was captured)
Sing to It by Amy Hempel, which I seem to have loved less than everyone else who reviewed it, but was happy to be acquainted with anyway
You Know You Want This: "Cat Person" and Other Stories by Kristen Roupenian, which I loved more than everyone else who reviewed it
Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, the first novel by an Omani woman to be translated into English
And I returned to Poland after nearly twenty years to write this profile of the extraordinary Olga Tokarczuk, who it turned out had already won the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018—we just didn't know it yet.
I don't always feel excited about my writing, either while I'm doing it or after the pieces are published. I see the gaps in my arguments, the details I misunderstood, the awkward phrases. But looking back on this list puts it in context: what a great year of reading. I feel genuinely privileged to be able to spend my time discovering, thinking deeply about, and alerting others to important writers like these.
For those of you interested in the business side of freelance book reviewing: I didn't pitch any of these pieces. Each was assigned to me by an editor. (Regarding the business side: I also adjunct and do paid speaking gigs, and I signed a new book contract this year. Usually I publish more.) So it's not that I chose to review all women writers; they chose me. Part of the reason for this, undoubtedly, is that editors, knowing my interests, are more likely to assign me books by women. But I'd also like to think that more books by women are being assigned, period.
Sometimes being a professional critic makes me feel, as Saul Bellow once put it, like "a deaf man who tunes pianos." But once in a while things happen that remind me why I believe in what I do. I often hear from readers who want to tell me how excited they were to discover a book I wrote about. I don't think about the authors of the books I'm reviewing while I'm writing about them—it would be paralyzing if I did—but once in awhile I get feedback from them, too, and it can be very meaningful. Kristen Roupenian posted this on Instagram after reading my review of her book:
... While there were certainly many thoughtful and enthusiastic reviews of my book, there were others that were not only harsh, but treated the book with open contempt—making it (and me) the target of anger and disgust in a way that I was wholly unprepared for. I had no idea how hard this would be for me, or how much being the focus of that kind of criticism would shake my confidence in myself & in my work....
I'd thought the answer was just to stop reading reviews, which I mostly had. But this review is by Ruth Franklin, who wrote a biography of Shirley Jackson (my favorite writer) that is in itself one of my favorite books. So I made an exception. And it puts my book in the context of other books & writers & the literary tradition that I love, in a way that, kind of miraculously, gave my own book back to me. Even the question she asks at the end makes me feel excited to keep exploring these ideas, to push myself further, as opposed to feeling shamed into silence.
It was such a gift to see the tangible emotional effects of my work. What Roupenian expresses here represents what I always strive to be: a book's very best reader, one who considers it in all its aspects, understands it in a way no one else quite has before, and encourages its author to live up to their own standards.
Happy holidays to all of you. See you in 2020.
Ruth
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are considered, by some, to dream." —Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House