13 Ways of Looking at the Novel -- Review

Well, it took me a bit longer than anticipated, but I just completed Jane Smiley's "13 Ways of Looking at the Novel." Very interesting. She wrote it after 9/11 when she had writer's block and couldn't finish a novel she was working on. So instead, she wrote about novels and read 100 novels and wrote little essays/critiques on each of the 100 novels.

What stood out to me was that she said the great question posed by most great novels since novels began is "What to do with women." I had never thought of it that way. But most of the novels I love do pose that very question. All of Austen's books revolve around a woman and what she will do with herself and what society will do with her. Some other that pop to mind are "The Portrait of a Lady," "Anna Karenina," "Madame Bovary," "The House of Mirth." So many.

And the answers of what to do with women have changed over the centuries as well. In the beginning, women were property of their fathers who needed to make a good or equal exchange. Nowadays the woman question is more "Now that we can choose our own destinies, what will we choose?"

Thanks to this book I have a host of novels to put in my queue. Most of them are "classics," but that doesn't mean that they are boring.