A Woman's Eye

Zusatztext "All new stories...all women writers...all female sleuths" -- Booklist . Informationen zum Autor Sara Paretsky is the author of many novels, including her V. I. Warshawski series, which began with Indemnity Only . She lives in Chicago. Klappentext Crime is common ground for the twenty-one women writers in this extraordinary collection of contemporary mystery fiction. The voices here include professional crime solvers who take you from the mean streets of V.I. Warshawski's Chicago in a case of music and murder... to the California freeway where Kinsey Millhone's beloved VW skids into a shooting... to the gang-held turf of Sharon says mum's the word. And then there are mothers! grandmothers! battered wives! and social workers -- ordinary women in extraordinary situations whose voices reveal contemporary life as seen through a woman's eye. From the opening tale of a girl down-and-out in London and what she steals from a corpse... to the final story of a summer vacation in the Berkshires! complete with romance and sudden death... this unique collection brings us great mystery writing that engages both our intellects and our hearts. EYE OF A WOMAN an introduction by Sara Paretsky My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. The Angel in the House spoke these words to Virginia Woolf when Woolf first tried to write for publication. The Angel was a phantasm, but its speech crystallized all the voices Woolf had heard from childhood on, telling her that women should never have a mind or wish of their own. Woolf says she struggled with this Angel for years, trying to kill it so that she could find her own voice. She died hard, the artist reports. Her fictitious nature was of great assistance to her. It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. Women have been wrestling with that Angel for many centuries. It is a difficult phantom to overpower because it speaks in so many voices and with so much authority behind it. In some cases the authority is quite specific. John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay, wrote in 1645 that the poet Anne Hopkins has fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason, by occasion of giving herself wholly to reading and writing, and had written many books. He added that if she had attended her household affairs, and such things as belong to women she had kept her wits. This kind of authority, this active pressure to keep women doing such things as belong to women, made it difficult for women to join the ranks of storytellers. Of course, we all look admiringly at the poet Sapphoall except the Athenian men who destroyed much of her work because she was praised more highly than their favorite Pindar. And we see the Lady Murasaki, the eleventh-century creator of the first novel, whose fatherrecognizing her talentlamented she had not been born a boy. She only had the minor hurdle of learning to write by secretly looking over her brothers' shouldersher lamenting father had forbidden her direct education. By 1700 we find more than one woman writer per century, but to see a continuous chain of female storytellers we can look back only two hundred years. During those two centuries women struggled hard for the right to be published and read. In the nineteenth century they often wrote under men's names to gain an audienceActon, Currer, and Ellis Bell for the Brontë sisters; George Eliot for Mary Ann Evans; and George Sand for Lucie Dupin Dudevant. George Sand wrote most of her enormous oeuvre at night, starting work at two or three in the morning after finishing with the management of her large household or her numerous lovers....

"All new stories...all women writers...all  female sleuths" --Booklist.

Auteur

Sara Paretsky is the author of many novels, including her V. I. Warshawski series, which began with Indemnity Only. She lives in Chicago.

Texte du rabat

Crime is common ground for the twenty-one women writers in this extraordinary collection of contemporary mystery fiction.

The voices here include professional crime solvers who take you from the mean streets of V.I. Warshawski's Chicago in a case of music and murder... to the California freeway where Kinsey Millhone's beloved VW skids into a shooting... to the gang-held turf of Sharon says mum's the word. And then there are mothers, grandmothers, battered wives, and social workers -- ordinary women in extraordinary situations whose voices reveal contemporary life as seen through a woman's eye. From the opening tale of a girl down-and-out in London and what she steals from a corpse... to the final story of a summer vacation in the Berkshires, complete with romance and sudden death... this unique collection brings us great mystery writing that engages both our intellects and our hearts.

Échantillon de lecture
EYE OF A WOMAN
 
an introduction by Sara Paretsky
 
“My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own.”
 
The Angel in the House spoke these words to Virginia Woolf when Woolf first tried to write for publication. The Angel was a phantasm, but its speech crystallized all the voices Woolf had heard from childhood on, telling her that women should never have a mind or wish of their own. Woolf says she struggled with this Angel for years, trying to kill it so that she could find her own voice. “She died hard,” the artist reports. “Her fictitious nature was of great assistance to her. It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.”
 
Women have been wrestling with that Angel for many centuries. It is a difficult phantom to overpower because it speaks in so many voices and with so much authority behind it. In some cases the authority is quite specific. John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay, wrote in 1645 that the poet Anne Hopkins “has fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason,… by occasion of giving herself wholly to reading and writing, and had written many books.” He added that “if she had attended her household affairs, and such things as belong to women … she had kept her wits.”
 
This kind of authority, this active pressure to keep women doing “such things as belong to women,” made it difficult for women to join the ranks of storytellers. Of course, we all look admiringly at the poet Sappho—all except the Athenian men who destroyed much of her work because she was praised more highly than their favorite Pindar. And we see the Lady Murasaki, the eleventh-century creator of the first novel, whose father—recognizing her talent—lamented she had not been born a boy. She only had the minor hurdle of learning to write by secretly looking over her brothers’ shoulders—her lamenting father had forbidden her direct education.
 
By 1700 we find more than one woman writer per century, but to see a continuous chain of female storytellers we can look back only two hundred years. During those two centuries women struggled hard for the right to be published and read. In the nineteenth century they often wrote under men’s names to gain an audience—Acton, Currer, and Ellis Bell for the Brontë sisters; George Eliot for Mary Ann Evans; and George Sand for Lucie Dupin Dudevant. George Sand wrote most of her enormous oeuvre at night, starting work at two or three in the morning after finishing with the management of her large household or her numerou…