Domestic fiction, like all literary genres, can be bad, and bad in an especially cloying, attenuated and dreary way. I call bad domestic novels Hallmark fiction, and I put in this category such best-selling novels as Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones,” Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Secret Life of Bees” and Ann Packer’s “The Dive From Clausen’s Pier.” Even the titles seem treacly and manipulative. “The Help” teeters on the edge of this category except for the gut-wrenching back story that abusive relationships between servants and mistresses were once a normal way of life.
But domestic novels can also be majestic. A few examples: Marilynne Robinson’s “Housekeeping”; “Room” by Emma Donoghue; “I Know This Much Is True” by Wally Lamb; “Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates; “The Slap” by Christos Tsiolkas; and pretty much anything by Trollope.
Aspirant writers hoping to further their careers might be able to scratch up leads, jobs, and promotion and publishing chances in a wide number of cities, but the following just might grant them something of an edge. With so many professional positions, festivals, awards, and sites of literary significance to explore, chances are high they’ll find something to pique their budding careers.
Mary Daniels Brown learned at an early age how to read people, and she’s been doing that ever since. Combining advanced education in both literature and psychology, she reads and reviews novels that explore identity, the search for meaning and purpose in life, and the varieties of human experience. She’s been blogging about books at Notes in the Margin for more than 25 years. Mary believes that her focus on Life Stories in Literature has made her both a more astute reader and a happier, more human person.
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