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Women writing as men and vice versa

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    Women writing as men and vice versa

    Do you have any problem with novels written by male authors where the first person narrator is a woman, or vice versa?

    I started a William Boyd novel recently in which the first person narrator is a woman and whlle reading felt a nagging sense of artifice which hindered my enjoyment.

    Is it a problem? What are the best and worst examples of men writing as women and vice versa?

    #2
    Nick Hornby wrote How to be Good from the perspective of a woman. It was better than when he wrote from the perspective of a 16 year old boy.

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      #3
      I think, as with any writing really, it depends how well the author does it. There are challenges which surely make it harder for, say, a middle class white male author to write from the perspective of a working class black woman, or vice versa, but that doesn't mean it's impossible for it to be done well.

      In other words my answer to the first question in the OP is, 'No.'

      Best and worst examples ... hmm. I'm having difficulty recalling many right now, but one that sort of meets the criteria would be Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, which I very much enjoyed. Wilkie Collins does it a fair bit in his epistolatory novels, very well in my opinion. Mary Shelley was quite a fan too; the vast bulk of Frankenstein and The Last Man are narrated by blokes.

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        #4
        Oh, Marlon James in A Brief History of Seven Killings, too. There's a very well-depicted female character narrating one of the narratives of that (in fact, hers is the one that's stayed with me the most since I read the book).

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          #5
          Does Iain Banks writing as a teenage girl brought up as a boy in The Wasp Factory count?

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            #6
            I can't remember, I was 15 when I read that.

            I've just looked up William Boyd and Wiki says he's written four novels from a female POV. He's also written an official James Bond novel and a novel with Ian Fleming as a character, and is a TV/film screenwriter. I can't comment on whether he's any good or not but based on that artifice is probably his thing.

            The Passion Of New Eve by Angela Carter is good.

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              #7
              Originally posted by Gangster Octopus View Post
              Does Iain Banks writing as a teenage girl brought up as a boy in The Wasp Factory count?
              Er, spoiler alert!

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