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So, I finally read Experimental Film: A Novel, today, and it's great, but a very weird experience. Apparently it's a truism that female writers have to cope with everyone assuming their work is autobiographical; except in this case it's partly right -- Gemma's made no secret that Lois, the narrator, is based on herself (or how she feels about herself when it's four in the morning and she can't sleep), and Lois' family are based on hers. Which, since I've met them all, makes it read sort of like fanfiction about real people I know. The first act, especially, is like everything I've heard her talk about in the past five years, condensed into a hundred pages. The big difference between Lois and Gemma is that the former doesn't have a career of fifteen-odd years as a fiction writer on her resume; and consequently, with her other careers (film critic, teacher) having gone under (through no fault of her own,) she feels like a failure.
I'd been looking forward to this book for a while, because I'd suspected that Gemma's horror and fantasy works aren't so much divergent streams of fiction, but the outcome of different story lengths: her short stories are horror because they end just as the protagonist sees what they're falling towards, while the Hexslinger trilogy gives the characters time to hit bottom and start climbing out of that hole and redeem themselves. I don't think Lois needs as much redemption as she thinks she does; unlike some other Files protagonists, she's never killed anyone.(1) Anyway, I still need some time to process this latest novel before I decide if my theory holds; also I don't want to spoil it for anyone.
1. She's not even involved in an underground necrophiliac puppetry ring (and I did wonder if "Ding Dong the Derry-O" is a children's show in this book's universe, but probably not, since Lois never lists it among the tv shows that filter into her son's echolalia.)
I'd been looking forward to this book for a while, because I'd suspected that Gemma's horror and fantasy works aren't so much divergent streams of fiction, but the outcome of different story lengths: her short stories are horror because they end just as the protagonist sees what they're falling towards, while the Hexslinger trilogy gives the characters time to hit bottom and start climbing out of that hole and redeem themselves. I don't think Lois needs as much redemption as she thinks she does; unlike some other Files protagonists, she's never killed anyone.(1) Anyway, I still need some time to process this latest novel before I decide if my theory holds; also I don't want to spoil it for anyone.
1. She's not even involved in an underground necrophiliac puppetry ring (and I did wonder if "Ding Dong the Derry-O" is a children's show in this book's universe, but probably not, since Lois never lists it among the tv shows that filter into her son's echolalia.)
