Every now and then I’m reading a book written by a man and I can’t believe it wasn’t written by a woman. Why would that be?
The first one that made me think that way was a ‘saga’ passed on to me by my Mum called The Ginger Tree. It’s about a young Edinburgh woman who leaves with her new husband for Japan in the twenties. Husband dies. Girl struggles to make a life for herself in Japan and later China (or possibly vice versa – horriblyvague when it comes to the Orient). Cue heartache and eventually war. It’s a love story, but not just a romance. The biggest pull on the heart-strings is the mother’slove for her long lost son. I can only think it’s the authenticity of the central character that made it so hard to believe a man wrote this, although just saying that feels like a lack of belief in the imaginitive powers of fellow writers. I write about men, don’t I?
I keep meaning to reread it some time to see if I still like it so much, but seem to have lost my copy.
Noticed yesterday that Patrick Gale has a new book out. He is someone else who to me feels like a women’s writer and in this instance seems to have gone for a full on love story and the pull of an old romance. He and I seem to pick similar themes: – lost manuscripts, old loves, beach holidays. This looks like another 
one for the TBR pile.
Ali Bacon / Books Etc 