Post by Brad Nelson on May 1, 2024 18:41:41 GMT -8
I finished A Spy in the House which I had mistakenly referred to earlier as "A Murder in the House."
The author is Y.S. Lee who (she's a she) was born in Singapore. DEI and affirmative action (which basically means the squelching of more talented authors so that sexual quotas can be met) has meant, at least in my experience, that any book written by a woman in the last 20 years is likely to be mediocre.
That said, I'm not afraid to check out a book written by a chick and have reviewed many, a few that have been good. And it has to be said that the same vibe that denudes the quality of books written by women has the same effect on books written by men in the last twenty years. Call it, for short, the "Gold Star for Showing Up" syndrome.
You think standards in airplane manufacturing and maintenance have fallen off? (And they have.) Well, just imagine how easily and quickly the non-life-threatening areas of life, such as writing books, have atrophied. And clearly they have.
That said, I was curious to see if a woman author from Singapore might be able to tell a story from either a woman's perspective or a woman's sensibilities and maintain at least a basic level of quality. I have no problem with either aspect. She needn't write like a man. But she must write well.
And I would say that A Spy in the House is a little of both. It's a little "woman's perspective" (for better or for worse, written with average skill) and a little woke nonsense. Still, given the backdrop of 1850s London, there were plenty of double-standards, women's roles were usually more constrained, and there were highly divergent roles for either sex...which anyone familiar with agricultural life knows is not "sexist." It's simply a necessary and efficient division of labor.
So, yeah, 1850s London is sort of hard to defend from a "I am woman, here me roar" perspective. It's low-hanging fruit for any female writer. And probably far too much of that easy fruit is picked in this novel. Still the flaws in the book stem more from a story that eventually loses steam and focus and which drifts into what is I-don't-care-ism for the reader. Just please get this over with so I can find who the killer was. Oh. Her? Blah.
But I would say the first 40% of it is competently written, if not sparklingly so. However, the main character of Mary Quinn is as thin and unimaginative as, say, a male character by a male writer would be in some piece of pulp fiction. So both sexes are more than able to produce words on a page without much art. They just tend to do it in different ways. And clearly you can see the female way of writing somewhat boring and thin characters.
But I would say both sexes these days seem to share the same problem with writing plots and endings. I think this has a lot to do with having no sense of romance, of honor, of style, of class, of panache. If you grow up in this day and age, nearly every noble thought or motive would have been drummed out of you well before you reach the age to produce your first novel. And it shows.
I don't regret reading this. And it's not horrible, for sure. But I would not read another one by this author, although if one were a 13-year-old girl, I could see it might hold some attraction.
The author is Y.S. Lee who (she's a she) was born in Singapore. DEI and affirmative action (which basically means the squelching of more talented authors so that sexual quotas can be met) has meant, at least in my experience, that any book written by a woman in the last 20 years is likely to be mediocre.
That said, I'm not afraid to check out a book written by a chick and have reviewed many, a few that have been good. And it has to be said that the same vibe that denudes the quality of books written by women has the same effect on books written by men in the last twenty years. Call it, for short, the "Gold Star for Showing Up" syndrome.
You think standards in airplane manufacturing and maintenance have fallen off? (And they have.) Well, just imagine how easily and quickly the non-life-threatening areas of life, such as writing books, have atrophied. And clearly they have.
That said, I was curious to see if a woman author from Singapore might be able to tell a story from either a woman's perspective or a woman's sensibilities and maintain at least a basic level of quality. I have no problem with either aspect. She needn't write like a man. But she must write well.
And I would say that A Spy in the House is a little of both. It's a little "woman's perspective" (for better or for worse, written with average skill) and a little woke nonsense. Still, given the backdrop of 1850s London, there were plenty of double-standards, women's roles were usually more constrained, and there were highly divergent roles for either sex...which anyone familiar with agricultural life knows is not "sexist." It's simply a necessary and efficient division of labor.
So, yeah, 1850s London is sort of hard to defend from a "I am woman, here me roar" perspective. It's low-hanging fruit for any female writer. And probably far too much of that easy fruit is picked in this novel. Still the flaws in the book stem more from a story that eventually loses steam and focus and which drifts into what is I-don't-care-ism for the reader. Just please get this over with so I can find who the killer was. Oh. Her? Blah.
But I would say the first 40% of it is competently written, if not sparklingly so. However, the main character of Mary Quinn is as thin and unimaginative as, say, a male character by a male writer would be in some piece of pulp fiction. So both sexes are more than able to produce words on a page without much art. They just tend to do it in different ways. And clearly you can see the female way of writing somewhat boring and thin characters.
But I would say both sexes these days seem to share the same problem with writing plots and endings. I think this has a lot to do with having no sense of romance, of honor, of style, of class, of panache. If you grow up in this day and age, nearly every noble thought or motive would have been drummed out of you well before you reach the age to produce your first novel. And it shows.
I don't regret reading this. And it's not horrible, for sure. But I would not read another one by this author, although if one were a 13-year-old girl, I could see it might hold some attraction.
