WHY MOTHERS MAKE FOR RISKY NARRATORS
Generally speaking, I devour books. I'm pretty much obsessed with going to my local library and visiting book shops. So I have quite a broad scope of main characters I have followed in my reading history. And I have to say, if a narrator is a mother, then odds are, I'm going to find the book a chore.
What do I mean by that?
I'm talking about the characters who are not actually people- they are walking motherhood rants. Mouthpieces for the author to vent some of her frustration on child rearing and get paid for it. I've stumbled across novels before that have a highly intriguing premise, only for it to be totally ruined for me when the narrator would prefer to give us an excruciating minutia of the school run.
Granted, obviously, entering parenthood is no easy task. We all know this, years before the notion of having offspring of our own even enters our mind. And it's not that I have anything against a character being a mother per se, it's just that I don't want to pick up an interesting looking novel and discover it's actually a parenting manual in disguise. Nobody likes the friend with kids who, whenever you ask them a question, goes off on a spiel about trying to work their schedule over who can look after the kids. If I can barely tolerate it in a real person, why would I want to read about it?
Also, you never hear men waxing lyrical on how hard it is being a parent- complaining about the kids and giving us all the details, whether we asked for them or not, seems solely to be a domain of women. But I have read plenty of interesting female characters who just so happen to be dealing with parenthood while everything else is going on. So let's try and keep it that way- save the rants for the coffee morning.
BOOKS
words: SASHA HUGHES