Friday, July 15, 2005
The Woman in the Wall by Patrice Kindl
I had high hopes for this book; the blurb sounded very good. "Anna is more than shy. She is nearly invisible....Anna retreats within their enormous Victorian house, and builds a house of her own: passageways and hidden rooms become her world." But certain parts of the story were so bizarre that they jolted me out of the possibility of the story. One was Anna falling into a handbag. C'mon! Shy, practically invisible, slight? I can buy that but NOT falling into a handbag.
Another jolt came from this line: "I was a woman because somewhere out there was F., a man." I have to say I almost choked on that sentence. What drivel! This is certainly not a sentiment that I would want to pass along to readers. This is not, to my mind, a healthy position. If a woman is a mature female then scientifically womanhood is a chemical/body happening that does not depend on the presence of a mature male seomwhere in the world. I'm disappointed that Patrice Kindl felt that the way to have Anna find herself and develop the strength to emerge into the world was to base her value on a man.
I almost forgot the link: http://www.powells.com/biblio/7-0395830141-0
Another jolt came from this line: "I was a woman because somewhere out there was F., a man." I have to say I almost choked on that sentence. What drivel! This is certainly not a sentiment that I would want to pass along to readers. This is not, to my mind, a healthy position. If a woman is a mature female then scientifically womanhood is a chemical/body happening that does not depend on the presence of a mature male seomwhere in the world. I'm disappointed that Patrice Kindl felt that the way to have Anna find herself and develop the strength to emerge into the world was to base her value on a man.
I almost forgot the link: http://www.powells.com/biblio/7-0395830141-0
# posted by JJ @ 6:13 AM 
