Discussion: only a woman

only a woman

although i also felt this book lost steam along the way, the reviewer in "under the covers" did make the striking point that this book could only have been written by a woman and retained the power it did. while i was reading _deerskin_ i started comparing my two favorite authors - robin mckinley and margaret atwood - as anyone who's read any of margaret's novels knows, her style is not exactly similar to robin's. so i started wondering what my favorite authors could have in common that drew me to each of them. of course they both write about strong female characters, but more than that, they both build their worlds around faerietale motifs.(margaret's _the handmaid's tale_, for instance, as a distorted version of "little red riding hood," where the heroine is raped by the wolf at the beginning of the story). both authors blur the distinction between life and faerietales, but where margaret makes life resemble a faerietale, robin makes faerie tales as real as life.

From: cameron lynn
cslynn@mail.wm.edu
Friday, January 24, 1997 at 13:55:19 (EST)