In her "Reckonings" column in Metroland, Jo Page meditates on the shortage of women novelists listed in Teju Cole's "Top Ten Novels of Solitude," which appeared in the Guardian in August 2011.
"It seems to me there are few novels in which women might opt for a kind of voluntary isolation similar to the Invisible Man or the Underground Man. Instead it is far more common for female protagonists to struggle to find their place amidst a obstacle course of social mores—Jane in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is as restricted in her choices as Rochester’s first wife, Bertha, is as Jean Rhys portrays her in Wide Sargasso Sea." More.
Page will visit on 3/20. Cole visited on 2/10.
Institute visitors who appear on Cole's list include Writers Institute Fellow Lydia Davis at #5, Colm Toibin at #9 and Kazuo Ishiguro at #10.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Top Ten Novels of Solitude
