The fight of the genres

missy_ally_carter

My sister and Ally Carter. I’m invisibly standing on the other side.

On Friday, I went to Ally Carter’s book signing with my sister. During the Q&A session someone asked her why it is that books for young adults are better than books for adults. “I pick up my daughter’s books,” she said, “and they’re more interesting than my own.”

Now, a few minutes before this question, someone had asked what advice Carter had for people who wanted to be writers, and her answer agreed 100% with mine, and was, I admit, fairly predictable to a writer: Read lots and write lots. (I think sometimes people think there’s some secret, since they keep asking, but really it comes down to this.)

Anyway, after hearing this answer, I was sort of nodding along, and I’ll admit to feeling a bit superior that we had this writing thing, at least, in common. But Carter’s answer to the question about YA vs. adult literature took me completely by surprise. Namely, she agreed.

I’m used to having people make fun of me, a writer of “serious” adult fiction, when I confess that I read—and enjoy—a lot of young adult writing, including, in this case, Carter’s Gallagher Girls series (in a nut shell: a series about an all-girls spy school). I’ve defended YA and other genre literature, and worked hard to stop referring to anything I enjoy as a “guilty pleasure,” as if it somehow means less. I was not, however, prepared to hear that tossed at literary fiction by the genres, however (and please note, I’m using these terms because they’re common, not because I necessarily agree with them).

My immediate thought was that, if there are people who think YA is far superior to adult fiction, they aren’t reading the right books. If the comparison is 50 Shades of Grey, okay, sure, we can talk about one being better written (and I think few people would argue), but to toss a whole genre aside?

I had to leave the signing shortly after this question since I had a soccer game to get to, and I left feeling frustrated. There’s so much competition between the genres, so much nastiness and name calling, and while Carter was very polite in her response, I never expected an author to take on a genre not her own in such a public place. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not angry, just a bit sad. And Ally Carter was funny and outgoing and she clearly loves her job and her fans. Still, I wanted to respond.

So here, for Ally Carter and the woman at the bookstore, are five books of grownup fiction (and I limited myself to novels written within the past five years) that I think absolutely rock:

My literary double life

I’m coming clean. I have a literary double identity. In some crowds I’m the high-literature loving MFA grad. I put books by prestigious authors on my shelves (the types of authors that might go on MFA thesis or class book lists, not those that necessarily sell gazillions of copies). In this life I balance my reading load, trying to fit in fiction (both short stories and novels) and nonfiction, and I’m even working myself up to some poetry. I subscribe to literary journals (though I’ve let most subscriptions lapse due to budgetary issues; I should amend this). I write book review. It’s in this life that I’m working on my book.

In my other literary life I inhale Wheel of Time books, various YA novels. I listen to Harry Potter on audio book (every night before bed; it’s helped with my insomnia and also keeps me distracted when I’m in bed recovering from a headache). It’s this side of my literary character that recently drove me to dig through the boxes of books in my basement to pull out a Clan of the Cave Bear book and the two books in the Island of the Blue Dolphins series thing.This side of me wants to write a YA book some day and is tossing ideas around in the back of my head. Heck, I’ve even been known to write some fan fiction.

Now don’t get me wrong here. One of these isn’t the real me while the other is a front. I love it all. I love a good, tough read as much as a quick lighter one (and I’ve been known to walk around the house, talking to myself as I analyze both). I love the time I spend working on my book (even if it is hard as all hell), and so far I’m really enjoying exploring the new (to me) genre of book reviews. When I got the new issue of Willow Springs last week I devoured it, then tore through 600 pages of YA the next day.

But I can’t help feeling, as I switch back and forth, that I’m somehow doing something wrong. You see, I don’t know many (any?) people like me. I know genre lovers who will pick up the occasional “meatier” book, and I know literary fiction readers who will read genre from time to time, but I have yet to meet someone who feels like he or she is being torn both ways. It’s as if, when I’m reading one, I can’t wait to finish so I can get back to the other. There really just aren’t enough hours in the day for my reading apparently.

Maybe what I should do is look at this as an opportunity. I may be just one person, but maybe I can bring about a bit of change. Maybe I can get the literary fiction people to enjoy and find real worth in more genre work, and maybe I can get genre readers to turn more of their attention to those books by small presses, those books that I have to order specially from the bookstore. I’m just one person, but I figure there have to be more people like me out there, and even if there aren’t, hey—one is still better than none.

In the meantime, I’m reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog (in translation from the original French, definitely literary fiction). At the top of my figurative to-read stack I’ve got a few YA books, three adult fantasy novels (two of which I’ve borrowed and should really get to soon), a nonfiction reportage-type book, and two books of short stories. Then there’s the novel I’ll be reviewing when it’s published in April (unless I can get an ARC sooner). And the question I always ask myself is: What on earth am I going to read next?