Those pesky literary labels
I've always struggled to come up with an answer when people ask, "What kind of books do you write?" My novels are literary, I guess, which is a tough one to define to begin with, but they have elements of the supernatural thriller, romance, and the good old fashioned ghost story. So when suspense writer Susanna Kearsley joined me on my forum Gail's Kitchen this week, I asked for her help in sorting out these categories. Here's part of our conversation:
Gail: "I really don't like how books are labeled in North America. Too much emphasis on genre, literary or no. My books have been stuck with the handle “Pacific Northwest Gothic.” I prefer to call it good old fashioned story-telling.
Your writing doesn’t fit neatly into a category either as it crosses genres. How do others define your writing? How would you define it? One of our students at UBC asked about niche-markets for thrillers in the US which interests me personally as I wouldn’t know what to call this current project I’m working on. Supernatural literary eco thriller? Silly handles."
Susanna: "You're right, I'd rather simply call it storytelling, because I don't fit into a genre very neatly, and that always causes problems for the marketing departments of my publishers!
Readers have compared my books to those of Mary Stewart or Daphne du Maurier, because like them I write about ordinary characters caught up in extraordinary circumstances, usually in European settings, with a good deal of suspense, and with a love story, although that isn't always the main focus of the book.
My husband once said that my books remind him of old Hitchcock movies like The Birds or Vertigo or Marnie, where there's something mysterious going on, and a thread of romance, and you're never sure what's going to happen.
I like that comparison."
Gail: "I like that comparision too. Really fits!"
Susanna: "In my experience, "commercial fiction" is a derogatory term used by people who want to imply that the work is somehow produced solely for commercial reasons and is therefore of less literary value than "real" writing. But in my opinion, writing is writing. Different writers choose different subjects, but fiction is fiction, and the stories are either good or they aren't.
...I happened to pick up the latest copy of Mystery Scene magazine last week, and in it was a profile of the Irish writer John Banville, a "literary" writer and past winner of the Booker Prize, who also writes mysteries as "Benjamin Black", and he says it very neatly when he's asked about the idea of "genre", which he says has no appeal for him. He says, "There is simply good writing and writing that is not so good...Good writing can occur anywhere." That's pretty much my opinion. Category designations change with times and fashions. Books that would have been considered "commercial" in their day, such as those written by Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and others, are now considered "literary" novels. So maybe it's more a function of whether the author is dead or alive!"
Ain't that the truth? For more of our conversation, go to: Gail's Kitchen
For more on Susanna and her new novel, The Winter Sea, go to: http://www.susannakearsley.com/
Gail: "I really don't like how books are labeled in North America. Too much emphasis on genre, literary or no. My books have been stuck with the handle “Pacific Northwest Gothic.” I prefer to call it good old fashioned story-telling.
Your writing doesn’t fit neatly into a category either as it crosses genres. How do others define your writing? How would you define it? One of our students at UBC asked about niche-markets for thrillers in the US which interests me personally as I wouldn’t know what to call this current project I’m working on. Supernatural literary eco thriller? Silly handles."
Susanna: "You're right, I'd rather simply call it storytelling, because I don't fit into a genre very neatly, and that always causes problems for the marketing departments of my publishers!
Readers have compared my books to those of Mary Stewart or Daphne du Maurier, because like them I write about ordinary characters caught up in extraordinary circumstances, usually in European settings, with a good deal of suspense, and with a love story, although that isn't always the main focus of the book.
My husband once said that my books remind him of old Hitchcock movies like The Birds or Vertigo or Marnie, where there's something mysterious going on, and a thread of romance, and you're never sure what's going to happen.
I like that comparison."
Gail: "I like that comparision too. Really fits!"
Susanna: "In my experience, "commercial fiction" is a derogatory term used by people who want to imply that the work is somehow produced solely for commercial reasons and is therefore of less literary value than "real" writing. But in my opinion, writing is writing. Different writers choose different subjects, but fiction is fiction, and the stories are either good or they aren't.
...I happened to pick up the latest copy of Mystery Scene magazine last week, and in it was a profile of the Irish writer John Banville, a "literary" writer and past winner of the Booker Prize, who also writes mysteries as "Benjamin Black", and he says it very neatly when he's asked about the idea of "genre", which he says has no appeal for him. He says, "There is simply good writing and writing that is not so good...Good writing can occur anywhere." That's pretty much my opinion. Category designations change with times and fashions. Books that would have been considered "commercial" in their day, such as those written by Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and others, are now considered "literary" novels. So maybe it's more a function of whether the author is dead or alive!"
Ain't that the truth? For more of our conversation, go to: Gail's Kitchen
For more on Susanna and her new novel, The Winter Sea, go to: http://www.susannakearsley.com/
posted by Gail Anderson-Dargatz at
10:40 AM
