If Colm Toibín’s Brooklyn had been written by a woman, would it have been a smash hit? Would anyone have cared one whit for a story about a young woman and her domestic struggles, if that young woman had been created and written by another woman? No. They wouldn’t.
A few short years ago, when the world was gripped by the throat by an ugly global recession, as opposed to just gripped by the goolies as we are now, fantasy fiction took off like a rocket. When times are bad, it seems, people want to go somewhere else in their heads, and that somewhere…
What goes around, comes around. Apparently, we are regressing, in terms of fiction, back to the sensationalistic stories of old. People seem surprised by this. I am surprised by people’s surprise. It’s like being taken aback because skirt lengths have changed again. If you didn’t see it coming, you were standing in the tunnel with…
Tara Sparling writes 