Post by susanmay on Sept 18, 2008 10:07:21 GMT
This summer's most interesting chicklit novel The Bright Side has three things that make it different from the competition. First, the writing is brilliant. Second, it is bluntly honest about sex and relationships in a way that most chicklit novels are not. Third, it was written by a man.
The book, by Irish author Alex Coleman, is funny, engaging, perceptive, but above all it is realistic. It begins, ahem, with a bang. The central character, Jackie, has been married to Gerry for over 20 years; she works in a tiresome office job in Dublin; she's having problems with her kids; and then one day when she arrives home early, because of a pounding headache, she sees something odd through the window.
"I'd only taken a few steps up the path when I saw him through the front room window and waved; he didn't see me. At that point, my thought process went as follows: There's Gerry. What's he at? He looks like he's running on the spot. No, wait -- he's shagging Lisa from next door. She was so far bent over the sofa that I couldn't see her face, but there was no doubt that it was her; I would have recognised that beautiful blonde hair anywhere, even when it was hanging the wrong way. I didn't faint or scream or throw up or simply run away. I didn't do anything. I just stood there with my hand still raised in greeting. Gerry was wearing a tie, which he sometimes did on a whim, and it had found its way over his shoulder. That, coupled with the expression of grim determination on his crimson face, made him look as if he was tackling a potentially tricky bit of DIY."
The description of this shocking moment and of the life changing minutes and hours that follow mark this out as popular fiction written in a style that combines searing honesty with humour. It is direct, factual and sharply observant in a way that the average three-best-friends chicklit novel never is. It does not have the romantic gloss that surrounds most chicklit novels even when they're claiming to be telling it like it really is.
So who is this new author Alex Coleman? Most people who pick up The Bright Side will assume that because all chicklit is written by women, Alex must be short for Alexandra.
But this particular chicklit writer is no chick. As Lou Reed might say, she is a he.
The writer is, in fact, a 30-something Irish male from Monaghan, called Damien Owens, author of two successful mainstream novels.
Owens' first novel Dead Cat Bounce was acclaimed by the literary critics and his last novel also attracted much praise. So what's he doing writing chicklit? Could the answer be money? A successful chicklit novel can earn a tidy sum. A series of hit chicklit novels -- on the Marian Keyes, Cecelia Ahern scale -- can earn millions.
You could write literary fiction for a lifetime and never earn enough to live on.
But Owens says his primary motivation is not the possibility of striking it rich. "I'm certainly not averse to making truckloads of money but, hand on heart, I just want to be a published writer. It's readers I'm after -- if I have to make money to do it, then dammit, I'll just have to live with that," he says.
The reason the book is out with a gender neutral pen name is because the publishers, Poolbeg, know from experience that many women readers have a problem picking up a book like this if the name on the cover is male.
The idea of a man getting inside the head of a woman to write this kind of story makes women uncomfortable. So if they see a male name, they may not buy the book.
Paula Campbell, the editorial director of Poolbeg, who are the publishers of The Bright Side, explains: "Women feel suspicious of the notion that a man is writing a book in this genre because, so often, women's fiction is labelled 'chicklit' (by men) and dismissed. So there is the feeling that a male author is trying to make money, to jump on the bandwagon; that their motives are not sincere.
"The other reason is that women feel that men don't understand how a woman really thinks and feels."
Poolbeg (who launched the careers of Maeve Binchy, Marian Keyes, Cathy Kelly, Patricia Scanlan, Sheila O'Flanagan and most of the other big names in popular fiction for women) know the market better than anyone else.
And most other publishers agree with them about the difficulty of publishing popular fiction for women written by male authors.
Knowing this, Damien Owens submitted The Bright Side under a female name (Lara Lavery) and the team in Poolbeg, while guessing that the name was not real, assumed that the writer was female.
"We all read the manuscript under the illusion that it was a woman writing," said Paula Campbell, "and we loved it.
"This book has all the ingredients of a bestseller and was crying out to be published -- so you can imagine our huge surprise when we discovered that the author was a man!
"I have to be very honest and say we may have rejected it without giving it a chance if it had come in by a male author."
It was so good that Poolbeg felt they had to go with it and the compromise was to give it a pen name which could be male or female. Campbell says that Owens is "first and foremost a storyteller."
In The Bright Side, he shows terrific insight into mind of the main character Jackie who just happens to be a woman. "In fact this book may be an eye-opener for some women as they realise that perhaps men know more than they are letting on," she says.
Damien Owens thinks we make too much of the differences between men and women.
"I didn't find it at all hard to write a first-person female narrative. Maybe it was because I thought of Jackie as a person in a pickle rather than 'a woman'. People tend to over-focus on the differences between men and women.
"From a comic point of view, there's a lot of material to be had in those differences, but I think we all react more or less the same in 90pc of situations."
He is not very fond of the chicklit label either.
"The term chicklit means different things to different people on different occasions," he says.
"Some use it quite innocently to mean fiction that's primarily aimed at a female audience.
"And some use it as a term of abuse for poor writing. Others -- including me -- use it in both senses.
"I've referred to The Bright Side as 'my chicklit book' when talking to friends and I've also poured scorn on books about models and champagne as 'just chicklit'. It depends on who's saying it and how, I think."
Did he study many of the big name chicklit writers before writing The Bright Side? "I didn't read any of the authors you're referring to but I'm sure I will one of these days.
"And when I do, I'll judge the book on whether or not I think it's any good, not whether or not I think it could be called chicklit.
"For the record, my favourite female writers are Melissa Bank and Anne Tyler."
He thinks that, these days, we should all be beyond the stage of worrying about the gender of the writer, even when it's a man writing popular fiction for women.
"I don't think that women should be put off by a man writing in a female voice.
"I can understand why they might think it's a bad idea, but I would also hope they'd be curious to see whether he could pull it off . . ."
Paula Campbell says that with this book "Poolbeg's challenge is to get our readers to trust us and take a chance as we did -- we chose a gender neutral name as we want the focus to be on the essence of the story and not the author."
She also revealed the intriguing information that Damien Owens is not the first male author to write popular fiction for women for Poolbeg.
"This is not the first time that Poolbeg has published male authors writing with female pseudonyms -- and in all cases the authors have been very successful from books for the beach to big blockbusters."
But when asked to name names, her lips are sealed, although she does admit that one bestseller this summer was written by a man with a female pen name.
The difference with Damien Owens is that he is happy to reveal his real identity and Poolbeg feel the book is so good and so perceptive about what we all feel -- men and women -- that once female readers dip into it they will be hooked.
The book, by Irish author Alex Coleman, is funny, engaging, perceptive, but above all it is realistic. It begins, ahem, with a bang. The central character, Jackie, has been married to Gerry for over 20 years; she works in a tiresome office job in Dublin; she's having problems with her kids; and then one day when she arrives home early, because of a pounding headache, she sees something odd through the window.
"I'd only taken a few steps up the path when I saw him through the front room window and waved; he didn't see me. At that point, my thought process went as follows: There's Gerry. What's he at? He looks like he's running on the spot. No, wait -- he's shagging Lisa from next door. She was so far bent over the sofa that I couldn't see her face, but there was no doubt that it was her; I would have recognised that beautiful blonde hair anywhere, even when it was hanging the wrong way. I didn't faint or scream or throw up or simply run away. I didn't do anything. I just stood there with my hand still raised in greeting. Gerry was wearing a tie, which he sometimes did on a whim, and it had found its way over his shoulder. That, coupled with the expression of grim determination on his crimson face, made him look as if he was tackling a potentially tricky bit of DIY."
The description of this shocking moment and of the life changing minutes and hours that follow mark this out as popular fiction written in a style that combines searing honesty with humour. It is direct, factual and sharply observant in a way that the average three-best-friends chicklit novel never is. It does not have the romantic gloss that surrounds most chicklit novels even when they're claiming to be telling it like it really is.
So who is this new author Alex Coleman? Most people who pick up The Bright Side will assume that because all chicklit is written by women, Alex must be short for Alexandra.
But this particular chicklit writer is no chick. As Lou Reed might say, she is a he.
The writer is, in fact, a 30-something Irish male from Monaghan, called Damien Owens, author of two successful mainstream novels.
Owens' first novel Dead Cat Bounce was acclaimed by the literary critics and his last novel also attracted much praise. So what's he doing writing chicklit? Could the answer be money? A successful chicklit novel can earn a tidy sum. A series of hit chicklit novels -- on the Marian Keyes, Cecelia Ahern scale -- can earn millions.
You could write literary fiction for a lifetime and never earn enough to live on.
But Owens says his primary motivation is not the possibility of striking it rich. "I'm certainly not averse to making truckloads of money but, hand on heart, I just want to be a published writer. It's readers I'm after -- if I have to make money to do it, then dammit, I'll just have to live with that," he says.
The reason the book is out with a gender neutral pen name is because the publishers, Poolbeg, know from experience that many women readers have a problem picking up a book like this if the name on the cover is male.
The idea of a man getting inside the head of a woman to write this kind of story makes women uncomfortable. So if they see a male name, they may not buy the book.
Paula Campbell, the editorial director of Poolbeg, who are the publishers of The Bright Side, explains: "Women feel suspicious of the notion that a man is writing a book in this genre because, so often, women's fiction is labelled 'chicklit' (by men) and dismissed. So there is the feeling that a male author is trying to make money, to jump on the bandwagon; that their motives are not sincere.
"The other reason is that women feel that men don't understand how a woman really thinks and feels."
Poolbeg (who launched the careers of Maeve Binchy, Marian Keyes, Cathy Kelly, Patricia Scanlan, Sheila O'Flanagan and most of the other big names in popular fiction for women) know the market better than anyone else.
And most other publishers agree with them about the difficulty of publishing popular fiction for women written by male authors.
Knowing this, Damien Owens submitted The Bright Side under a female name (Lara Lavery) and the team in Poolbeg, while guessing that the name was not real, assumed that the writer was female.
"We all read the manuscript under the illusion that it was a woman writing," said Paula Campbell, "and we loved it.
"This book has all the ingredients of a bestseller and was crying out to be published -- so you can imagine our huge surprise when we discovered that the author was a man!
"I have to be very honest and say we may have rejected it without giving it a chance if it had come in by a male author."
It was so good that Poolbeg felt they had to go with it and the compromise was to give it a pen name which could be male or female. Campbell says that Owens is "first and foremost a storyteller."
In The Bright Side, he shows terrific insight into mind of the main character Jackie who just happens to be a woman. "In fact this book may be an eye-opener for some women as they realise that perhaps men know more than they are letting on," she says.
Damien Owens thinks we make too much of the differences between men and women.
"I didn't find it at all hard to write a first-person female narrative. Maybe it was because I thought of Jackie as a person in a pickle rather than 'a woman'. People tend to over-focus on the differences between men and women.
"From a comic point of view, there's a lot of material to be had in those differences, but I think we all react more or less the same in 90pc of situations."
He is not very fond of the chicklit label either.
"The term chicklit means different things to different people on different occasions," he says.
"Some use it quite innocently to mean fiction that's primarily aimed at a female audience.
"And some use it as a term of abuse for poor writing. Others -- including me -- use it in both senses.
"I've referred to The Bright Side as 'my chicklit book' when talking to friends and I've also poured scorn on books about models and champagne as 'just chicklit'. It depends on who's saying it and how, I think."
Did he study many of the big name chicklit writers before writing The Bright Side? "I didn't read any of the authors you're referring to but I'm sure I will one of these days.
"And when I do, I'll judge the book on whether or not I think it's any good, not whether or not I think it could be called chicklit.
"For the record, my favourite female writers are Melissa Bank and Anne Tyler."
He thinks that, these days, we should all be beyond the stage of worrying about the gender of the writer, even when it's a man writing popular fiction for women.
"I don't think that women should be put off by a man writing in a female voice.
"I can understand why they might think it's a bad idea, but I would also hope they'd be curious to see whether he could pull it off . . ."
Paula Campbell says that with this book "Poolbeg's challenge is to get our readers to trust us and take a chance as we did -- we chose a gender neutral name as we want the focus to be on the essence of the story and not the author."
She also revealed the intriguing information that Damien Owens is not the first male author to write popular fiction for women for Poolbeg.
"This is not the first time that Poolbeg has published male authors writing with female pseudonyms -- and in all cases the authors have been very successful from books for the beach to big blockbusters."
But when asked to name names, her lips are sealed, although she does admit that one bestseller this summer was written by a man with a female pen name.
The difference with Damien Owens is that he is happy to reveal his real identity and Poolbeg feel the book is so good and so perceptive about what we all feel -- men and women -- that once female readers dip into it they will be hooked.
is he serious?? so does that mean chick flicks are bad films?
I dont think so!!! what an a**...... dont like him either......
I quite like books that appeal to both sexes.