Why Women Read Fiction The Stories of Our Lives
Written by a leading academic and broadcaster and drawing on interviews with readers, writers, reading groups, bookshop owners, librarians, and figures from literary publishing, reviewing, and festivals, this accessible volume offers an overview of the contemporary scene of women's novel-reading.
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For many women, reading novels and short stories is a great pleasure, allowing them to escape and to spread their wings intellectually and emotionally. This book draws on around 500 interviews with and questionnaires from women readers and writers, including Hilary Mantel, Helen Dunmore, Sarah Dunant, and Katie Fforde. It explores why fictional works and writers are of vital importance to the way female readers see and shape their life stories. Centred on a British context, Taylor explains why women are the main buyers and readers of fiction, members of book clubs, attendees at literary festivals, and organisers of days out to fictional sites and writers' homes. She considers the special appeal and changing female readership of the genres of romance, erotica, and crime, and illuminates the reasons for British women's abiding love of two favourite novels, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre.
