Someone mentioned Mating by Norman Rush the other day. It’s a book I have always intended to read- not only is it a National Book Award winner, but I remember the positive comments about it when it was new (1991). Rush, a Swarthmore graduate, wowed critics with his story collection Whites (1986) and went on to write this tale of a courtship set in 1980s Botswana. Here’s the remarkable part: Rush writes in the voice of a woman – a woman looking for “intellectual love.” (Amazon says it’s as if Jane Austen were in the Peace Corps…) How does a male author get inside the psyche of a female to the point of writing a convincing and recognizable “soulmate search” through her eyes?
Another male author who manages this quite well is Wally Lamb in She’s Come Undone (1992). Lamb fully inhabits his pre- teen heroine whose emotions are the result of the abusive and relentless disasters in her life. Her extreme antics – some funny, some disgusting- unfold in a believable female voice. Food and television give comfort, as she loses her mental stability….and then regains it with professional help. The female voice never wavers.
Have you read other fiction by a male author written in the voice of a female? Do you think that differences in male/female points of view are artificial definitions? Can you tell the sex of the author when you read a short story or novel?
