Tuesday, January 8, 2013

More on too many women

Reading the Bookslut blog, I saw the following:

There is a book award called the Costa Book award: The Times reports that "Women sweep the board at Costa Book Awards".  They write that "For the first time in its history, women have won all five award categories at the Costa Book Awards. [..] The 2012 Man Booker, Forward and Costas have now all gone to female writers."

The Telegraph has the headline: "Costa Book Awards: winning women fully deserve their prizes" (Isn't that a little funny for a headline..?)
and starts out with "It feels like a watershed moment sure to get people talking: for the first time in its history women have won all five Costa Book Awards. But look a little closer and the winners in each category are hardly controversial. [...] I should also mention that three of the five Costa winners have male protagonists – evidence, if we needed it, that the authors are pursuing the stories that interest them and do not feel in the slightest inhibited their gender. Neither should their readers." Not sure I would interpret necessarily the evidence of male protagonists the way the reporter does, however... 

I am sometimes disturbed when a female author writes from the point of view of a male protagonist (which is not the same as writing a book with a male protagonist) though I guess I shouldn't be, but somehow, it feels weird. It made me stop reading one of Herta Muellers' novels....

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