KimElliott.net

Years ago literary women would take on a male pseudonym to see their work in print. Now the shelves of bookshops are stacked with both genders, even if the awards shortlists aren’t.

I was surprised this weekend when a male friend asked for a novel recommendation and specified no female authors of contemporary fiction. He even said he’d rather go for a male author of commercial fiction than a female contemporary author.

Eventually we came to a compromise, he would borrow Douglas Copeland’s The Gum Thief as long as he would also take home A M Homes’ This Book Will Save Your Life. I’m awaiting the results.

It got me thinking, if men object to reading novels by women, especially when those novels contain male protagonists, is it better to trick them into believing you’re a man?

If my friend had been less well read, I could have handed him A M Homes’ book and he’d have accepted and loved it. (On another note, his initial reason for backing away was the cover - six sickly coloured doughnuts).

In an article by Sharon Krum she states because her debut novel was seen as male it was suggested she change her identity to match. “Your gender is holding you back,” one editor told her. Despite this she went on to publish Walk of Fame a successful novel centred around a male character.

Yet, if you head toward Amazon, you’ll find one reviewer full of praise stating, Sharon Krum deftly writes through the voice of a man. So well, in fact, you forget that it’s a woman writing the novel. Would this ever be said of a man writing as a woman?

Which leaves me to question, would my writing become more palatable if Kim became Ken?