Does the state of the world turn readers to “escapist” books, or does it just turn readers away from books? Rosemary Sorensen reports.
DESPITE THE CLAIM that so-called escapist romance novels are booming because, apparently, women want to “be inspired and feel joy”, it might seem all too hard right now to pick up a book of fiction, and stay with settings, characters and plots that have absolutely nothing to do with what’s going on in the world.
Please note that’s a statement which begins with “might”. In keeping with the contemporary trend for nasty abuse pushing back against anyone (in this instance, me) having a bit of a think about books, writing and the conversations around them, if you’ve seen the words “escapist romance novels”, and thought, right, it’s on, time to get out the high horse, hop on and gallop towards the enemy (again, me). If that’s you, dear reader, and you’ve read into the second paragraph (well done, you), please can you head off into greener pastures with your nag. Trot off.
As soon as “genre” is mentioned, the old narrow definitions kick in — as can be seen in the story, 'Romance fiction enjoys comeback as women seek escapism', which the ABC ran earlier this month. The journalist accepted without a moment’s hesitation the annual growth rate of 49 per cent for “a genre once trivialised as a low-brow guilty pleasure”.
Let’s rewrite that to: books written by women once trivialised so as not to be taken seriously (that is, not to be read by men).
But no, here we are in the middle of what economist and former finance minister for Greece Yanis Varoufakis has called our era’s Kristallnacht. Here we are having to watch a vulgar, greedy, immoral wretch amass huge profits from destroying American society. Here we are listening with dread to politicians still making excuses for the terrifying lack of action on our climate disaster. And, over in the “culture” section, we’re still seeing that same boring, outdated marketing kitsch about what women read and why.
If we turn our backs on that cul-de-sac of clichés, the bigger and better question about reading in the age of genocide is this: Does the state of the world turn readers to “escapist” books, or does it just turn readers away from books? Too hard to concentrate. Too many distractions on your little screen that keep flashing unwanted messages. Too much sorrow.
Even the essential reading about the relentless awfulness gets too hard, because it feels like you’re picking at a scab. Let it heal, please, you beg the world (and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese), but the wound just keeps weeping from a deep infection.
And then you remember that, like going for an exercise walk and discovering how good it feels to walk, your mind loves and needs to read, and responds with vigour and pleasure when you find something good.
Which brings us back to “good” and why the blah about women wanting to escape into romanticism is a furphy. Reading clichéd romanticism is like eating processed foods that are made so you need more to feel satisfied. If you’re devouring story after story about winsome lasses-with-attitude winning the physically and financially well-endowed bloke against the prickly odds strewn across her path, you’d like to think you begin to distinguish between those that are flapdoodly and clichéd, and those that are written with panache.
Before we get to the nub – which is going to be a wee rave about a woman’s writing that is so good it brought tears to my eyes – let me mention a couple of examples of “romance” that rock.
Obviously, Jane-bloody-Austen wrote romance, and obviously, it would have been wonderful if her heroes weren’t so handsome and her heroines so in need of an income (Emma aside, which is probably why Emma is the most resistant to filmmaking, because she does not have genteel poverty among her flaws needing to be addressed).
But, closer to home, if you want a delicious romance, what about Elizabeth Kostova’s fabulous 2005 tale, The Historian, an absolutely bonkers vampire story that is also a thoroughly satisfying tale of love. Or Ann Patchett’s 2023 Tom Lake, as sweet as cherries, but with the weight of iron anchoring it to the real world. It’s true, I’ll grant you, that these contemporary romances are not necessarily found on literary prize shortlists, possibly because they are still considered suspiciously “women’s fiction”.
It's true, too, that the urgent books being published now make it almost impossible to be charmed by sweetness. Once I closed the pages of Pankaj Mishra’s superb, powerful book, The World After Gaza: A History, I thought two things simultaneously: we must keep reading about this and I can’t read any more about this.
But it certainly didn’t make me think, Oh, I just need to escape into some poorly written schmaltz. That’d be like being told by the doctor you’ve got super-high cholesterol and thinking, Oh, I just need to eat a giant-size bag of crisps. That’ll help.
Then, reader, on a crisp late-autumn morning, as I flicked through more awful news interspersed with,
'...talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.'
...at which point Lewis Carroll had the Oysters cry out to the Walrus and the Carpenter, 'wait a bit, Before we have our chat, For some of us are out of breath, And all of us are fat!'…
Where was I? As I flicked through more awful news, I saw that the New Yorker had published a chunk of Patricia Lockwood’s upcoming novel, a stand-alone story titled 'Fairy Pools'. If it hadn’t been in the New Yorker – which publishes fiction of exceptional quality, the kind of writing that makes you want to go back, after you’ve scoffed the whole thing, to work out what ingredients were used and how they were combined so deftly – my fiction-abstinence may well have continued. But I remembered reading Lockwood’s 2021 novel, No One is Talking About This, with awe and gratitude, so in I went.
Now, I really want to quote the whole thing to you, but the sound recording you can listen to instead of reading runs for almost 30 minutes, so that’s not going to happen. Even to give you the strange, enigmatic and poetic opening paragraph would defeat the purpose, because the second paragraph is so succinctly amusing and gentle, so brilliant at setting the scene, the characters, the tone, the narrative arc. Suffice to say, an American family group lands in Scotland, and off they go, in a car together, to be tourists in a land they hope and believe is pretty darn magical.
And on it goes, taking us to touristy places, into hotels and eateries, gradually piecing together why these people are there, what they hope this holiday time will achieve, until, in the final few paragraphs, the kaleidoscope stops shifting, and we see. Through tears.
Phew, I said, as I reached the end words:
'Everyone must pay.'
Then, yay, I said, as I saw the coda: 'This is drawn from Will There Ever Be Another You.' Then, bugger, I said, when I saw the novel won’t be published until September.
Call me a romantic, but I love writing that is so clever and interesting, and entertaining and relevant, and valuable, it seems beyond understanding how someone could write so well. Please, world, can I have some more?
Rosemary Sorensen is an IA columnist, journalist and founder of the Bendigo Writers Festival.
