Thursday, February 04, 2010

Beyond Heaving Bosoms- The Smart Bitches Guide to Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan

Romance is one of the largest categories in the bookselling world, and also one of the most despised by critics and non-readers of romance. Romances are put down as "Chick porn", and the average image of a romance reader isn't very flattering- the bored housewife in sweats voraciously devouring stack after stack of brainless romances where the heroes order the virginal young heroine around, force their passions on her with hard, punishing kisses, and even rape her- and it all somehow ends at "happily ever after". And the hero? Some long-haired guy who runs around with a shirt unbuttoned to expose his many chest, but not untucked from his pants, occasionally sporting something long and phallic to suggest something else long and phallic.

But are all romances really brainless chick porn? Hell, no! And the smart romance readers know it. The really smart ones can point out to you that romance in books is everywhere, from the classics, like Jayne Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice- to modern day mystery and detective novels, or Science Fiction and Fantasy- all have romance in them. Unless you've spent your entire life reading only non-fiction (and honestly, that's not possible given schools these days), you've read romance, even if it's in a play like Romeo and Juliet.

So why is romance so roundly hated? Well, part of it has to do with who it is aimed at- women, who have always been low on the totem pole of importance. Just as how women were once only the nurse, and the nurse was deemed less important than a doctor, so romance, as a primarily marketed to women category of books, comes into the same sort of condemnation. Because romance books are so female friendly, it's okay to look down on them and by extension, by the readers of those same romances.

And yes, perhaps once there was a glut of Alpha (or Asshole Alpha) heroes with shouty, abusive, rapey ways, but those quickly went by the wayside and are now no more to be seen- except in reprints of old titles. Modern readers of romance tend not to find them interesting or sexy, so now heroesget their own point of View, so the readers can see the Hero's Journey as well as the heroine's. And the clinch cover has also changed- did you know that the cover was never for women, but for the men who bought the romance novels for the book stores?

I love the Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books blog, but this is more than just a re-hash of what's on the website. This book traces the evolution of the romance novel from the early Asshole Alpha heroes (which they memorably dub the "Alphole" into the kinder, gentler heroes of today. Illustrated with many charts (How can you tell if what you are reading is Old Skool Romance or New Skool Romance? Check the chart!) and pictures (Mavis, the supposed "average romance reader" many people think of when they think about people who read romance, and Clinch cover with the O-face heroine)m, this book tackles what is sore subject for many people with amazing wit and humor.

You can not only laugh at the misperceptions of those who think of romance novels as the land of the shouty, rapey hero, but dissect the reason why old skool romance pisses so many modern readers off, from the "Big Mis" or misunderstanding that could be solved by locking the hero and heroine in one room and making them, you know, TALK TO EACH OTHER. But this book confronts a real big misunderstanding in just about every romance novel- the idea that the hymen is located just inside the heroine's "moist cave".

This is a book that will make you laugh while pointing out just how prevalent the myths are about romance, and give you truth to combat the myths. The Chapters aren't numbered, but are titled in such a way as to provide laughter while informing you as to what lies within, such as "Chapter WTF?", " Chapter Codpiece" and my personal favorite "Chapter Secret Cowboy Baby". Some of the stuff inside will either tickle your funnybone or make you go "Sigh, another mad-libs romance?", but this book tends towards the snarky/funny side of the spectrum rather than the serious/learned side, but it does cover some more serious sides of the romance genre, such as the plagiarism scandals that brought down both Cassie Edwards and Janet Dailey. Well done, and recommended.

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