I have discovered a new-to-me author and she is incredible. Her name is Janelle Brown.
So far I have read her books ‘Pretty Things’ and ‘Watch Me Disappear.’ They are both excellent. ‘Pretty Things’ was better (and is going to be adapted into a TV show starring Nicole Kidman- I can’t wait. Kidman was outstanding in both ‘Big Little Lies’ and ‘The Undoing.’)
What makes them so excellent?
They are about real women.
They are about women who are petty, jealous, selfish, angry, frustrated, resentful and tired. They are about women who think nasty thoughts, experience pain and crises, and are gloriously human. I don’t know why Brown’s books are not better known but they should be. Everyone should be learning how to write women from her. The women she writes are not vamps or virgins, sexpots or ingenues. They are real- mothers who blink back tears as they stand at the tailor’s and the dress they thought they would feel sexy in doesn’t fit, daughters who get their dopamine hits from their Instagram likes and spurned girlfriends out to even the score. They are not flat characters. They are vibrant, electric, such that you want to keep turning the pages, thinking to yourself, I know you. I recognize you. Because you are me.
Anyone who has ever been honest with themselves has recognized that they carry ugliness within. All of us do. All of us have insecurities and unfulfilled hopes and dreams and wishes, and deal with envy, distress and despair. Especially now, in our world of carefully filtered and curated social media presentation, books like Brown’s are refreshing. Because they are about women who know what they are, know who they are, and have chosen to own it. They are about the women who don’t mind having labels ascribed to them, the ‘bad’ women.
Janelle wrote a fantastic piece in which she explains her motivation for writing these kinds of books. It’s called ‘My Life as an Unlikable Woman.’ Read the whole thing. But I’ll excerpt from it below.
I write novels with “unlikable” women. Or so I’m sometimes told, though honestly, I hate the term. I think of my protagonists as difficult women with complicated feelings, who often do things that are against conventional expectation.
To wit: Billie, the protagonist of my latest literary suspense novel, Watch Me Disappear, manipulates her friends, deceives her husband, and emotionally suffocates her child — all before disappearing on a hike. This is not the most charming behavior, and that’s why I love her. Nice women make good friends; they do not make for terribly great stories. This is why my characters cheat, lie, and worry not a whit about what other people think of them.
My characters do everything that I am afraid of doing myself.
I’ve spent most of my 43 years worrying that I’m not likable enough; trying to be nice and pleasant and not rock the boat. In part, that stems from a childhood in which I wasn’t always particularly likeable — I was a bit of a know-it-all, a bit of a dork, the kind of kid who always raises her hand first when the teacher asks a question. I equated visibility with likability — hoping that being smart and outspoken would endear me to my peers. (As anyone who has ever been a 10-year-old can tell you — it doesn’t.)
I struggled to find my footing in the social milieu of my youth, and it wasn’t until the very end of high school that I finally shed my awkwardness and started figuring out how to make friends. Until then, there were many lunchtimes spent hiding in school bathrooms so that I wouldn’t be seen wandering aimlessly, alone, around the campus. I knew people didn’t like me; I didn’t know what to do about it.
She’s writing my life.
I think of my protagonists as difficult women with complicated feelings, who often do things that are against conventional expectation.
Isn’t that all of us?
We live in a world that celebrates black and white thinking. This is the “correct” way to think. This is the “incorrect” way to think. We live in a world that values cancelling people if someone has not expressed the exact right thought in exactly the right way. We live in a world where friendships are lost or made based on your political affiliation or vaccine status. We live in a world that is, in effect, suffocating.
I know I find it suffocating.
Here’s an example. Motherhood is complicated. The same woman who is extremely grateful to have children, watching others struggle with the emotional, physical and financial toll of infertility, may also have moments (or entire days) where she wants to leave her family behind. Their need is cloying. From morning till night, she gets up and caters to everyone’s needs. She washes dishes for them, washes their laundry, folds it, sweeps the floor, cooks the meals, shops for groceries, does carpool, and all of this in addition to a job. Of course she feels tired, angry and resentful. This is not a “pretty” concept. It’s the definition of ugly. And yet it’s true.
But most people can’t admit it. They can’t admit it because they are afraid of being judged. Imagine a happy saccharine sweet voice cooing: But motherhood is a gift! You are so blessed. You should be grateful for your blessings.
Here’s the thing: you can be intellectually grateful for your blessings and also resent them. Because life is difficult and you are going to have difficult moments. Difficult women with complicated feelings, women like me, know this.
So it’s a breath of fresh air to see ourselves represented on the page. Here is a woman as her whole self- frustrated in the supermarket when the cantaloupes aren’t ripe and now her grand plan for dinner has gone awry, a teenager angry at the family that rejects her because she doesn’t have the right clothing or the right haircut, misinterpreting events through the lens of her own insecurity and lack of self esteem. Here is woman celebrated- here is woman triumphant.
I’m devouring every single one of Brown’s books. We need more authors like her.
I feel so seen.