Are You A Kissing Book? Part II

[mothwing]

It seems that the best chance of finding books about women without love plots is when searching among YA novels and historical novels involving royal, crossdressing characters hell-bent on learning how to fight, as long as they can keep their hands off servants and mentors, that is. Not entirely surprising, but sad.

The books below, judging by summaries and reviews, have good chances of not containing love plots.

• Dorothy Canfield Fisher's Understood Betsy - orphan Elizabeth Ann leaves her sheltered city life for a life on her aunt's farm and its various chores, which she rapidly grows to love too much to leave again.

• Allan Frewin Jones' Warrior Princess series: Branwen, aided by faithful former slave Rhodri, becomes a warrior princess and defends her home and hearth against the Saxons. I'm foreseeing Branwen/Rhodri, but who knows.

• Astrid Lindgren's Ronja the Robber's Daughter - in spite of her family history, Ronja does not want to become a robber, neither does Birk, the son of her clan's closest enemy. They flee and their families have to work together to find their children.

• Donna Jo Napoli: Hush. Irish Princess Melkorka and her sister Brigid are sent away for safekeeping when a plot on her family is threatening her life and are captured by Russian slavers instead. They try to keep their royal birth secret by not speaking. Upside: no love plot, downside: gangrape.

• Rebecca Tingle's version of teen Æthelflæd, The Edge of the Sword. King Alfred's teenaged daughter Æthelflæd is not happy with the prospect of having to marry an older ally of her father, even unhappier with her bodyguard, but learns how to fight and protect those close to her gladly, which soon becomes necessary.

• Theresa Tomlinson's Wolf Girl. Wulfrun's mother is accused of stealing a neclace and Wulfrun sets out to prove her innocene.

Other loveplot-less books:

• Michael Ende's Momo- Orphan Momo live s in a ruined amphitheatre. When everyone she loves start falling prey to the Men in Grey and their timesaving bank, she steals their life time back. German classic really eveybody should read.

• Annika Thor's Sanning eller Konsekvens (Ich hätte nein sagen können)  -Nora doesn't like the way her class, especially rich Fanny, are mobbing big-chested Karen, but finds out to what lengths even she herself will go to get her best friend Sabina back, who is best friends with Fanny these days.

Comments

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

I found all the books of Napoli's I read really problematic in one way or another, and just about all of them seem to be miserable. :/

Nahoko Uehashi's Moribito books look like if there's a romance subplot, it's very minimal; I can't tell from the plot summaries and I haven't read the ones that have been translated so far. They appear to focus primarily on the main character and the child she has to protect.

I'm going to have to keep an eye out more carefully; I'm not bothered by well-done romance subplots and don't always remember them when I think about a book, but I am am frustrated about how many romance subplots are badly-done and/or derailing to the story and wish romance weren't shoehorned into every story.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

They didn't look very upbeat, either, what with gangrape and slavers and that. Makes me wonder why they're YA books, somehow.

I'm normally not too bothered by romance plots, either, but after reading one too many of the not-well-done sort I started paying attention to them and also started getting pissed off by the fact that they are EVERYWHERE. Therefore I started looking for stories that specifically don't contain them - it's not as though I'll never read anything that contains a love plot ever again, it's just that right now I'm curious whether any books without them exist at all, and so far, they've been devilishly difficult to find.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

YA doesn't have to be happy, and often deals with heavy topics, but there's something about the way Napoli does it that just rubs me the wrong way--in either YA or adult fiction. I don't know. And I have been...unimpressed with how she handles disability (in fairytales, disability and deformity are often external markers of internal evil; in modern retellings, I am Very Disappointed if the author doesn't question that).

Understood--and it is ridiculous how hard they are to find.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I think there is a difference between gang rape and not happy - of course I don't know how detailed that's going to be, but this in specific bothers me about many historic YA novels - of course sexual violence happens and happened, but the frequency with which this brand of violence is included in books aimed at young girls upsets me and strikes me as unnecessarily gratuitous. Of course this is not surprising, considering how often it's used to add grit and background detail to adult historic novels, so this as the kiddie version was most likely inevitable.

Disability handling - o.O WTF, that's creepy.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I...really don't like sexual violence in YA fiction (hence why I was lukewarm about Silver Phoenix overall--it didn't have any actual rape, but there was a near-constant threat of it. For reasons which made sense with the plot and the world of the story, but I still didn't like it). There is probably a need for some YA fiction addressing sexual violence topics, but I don't like it being used because a) it adds instant tension and/or angst (this is why I am no longer a Mercedes Lackey fan, partially) or b) because "women got raped a lot in history" or something like that, which seems to be the assumption of a lot of adult historical writers, and apparently that's bleeding over into YA.

Napoli's Rapunzel book was...wow. It was a dealbreaker for her writing for me. I was hoping until the end that she'd pull out something subversive, but no--Rumpelstiltskin is punished with disability and ugliness for his sin of pride and for being a jerk, and hey! It turns out he really is evil, and there will be no redemption for him at all. (Plus his daughter basically married her rapist, so everyone was miserable. The text slightly critiques the spinner marrying a man who was ready to execute her if she didn't do the impossible, but it doesn't manage to pull out any sort of agency or happy ending for her--she just...marries the prince. And is miserable. And judgemental, but that's okay because Rumpelstiltskin really is as evil as he is ugly and disabled. >:()

...I really hated Spinners, can you tell? And irritatingly, it was beautifully written and had a lot of really cool aspects. But I just found it horrifying. I really feel that if authors want to retell super-problematic stories, they have a responsibility to subvert the problematic aspects.

[kellychambliss.livejournal.com]

What a fun-looking list; I'll check these out.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Hope they are, do let me know what they're like; I don't doubt you'll get hold of them much sooner than I will. :)

[ysilme]

I haven't followed the subject of yours very close so far, and I don't know what YA means, for example.
But since you listed Momo, I dare to mention two other children's or rather teenager's books I loved to bits when I was a teen and still love reading them over and over:

Ronja Räubertochter (Ronja the Robber's Daughter) by Astrid Lindgren - despite her friend and companion Birk, who shares part of her adventures, I always felt this to be a book about a strong and self-reliant girl. She declares him as her brother, and nothing else seems to be on her mind, relationship-wise. Her mother, Lovis, is also depicted as a very strong and leading character, and I always felt her to be the real leader of Mattis's robbers. Of course, the relationships are still hetero. I'm personally usually favouring (and always have been) books where the heroine is self-sufficient and a strong character, and having a partner/friend/any kind of companion is not important in the gender and role sense, but in the sense of having a companion at all, not being lonely, and sharing one's live.

The other one is Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, much better know to the English speaking reader than the German version, Das allerbeste Apfelmus. It is the story of a girl taken out of her surroundings of a pampered child of poor health by two lady aunts, into a rural life where self-reliance is important. She learns to realise and cherish her own worth and abilities, led by two strong female characters (the rural aunts). I have it read countless times in German, and have found the English audiobook on librivox only recently, so now know also the original. I don't know if you know librivox; volunteers read books out of copyright for free and for everybody, and the link to the Gutenberg e-text is usually also available.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

YA means Young Adult, the target audience that comes after teens and kids. I don't think we have an equivalent - we have Jugendliteratur, but we don't really have anything for Junge Erwachsene in specific.

Thanks for the recs. :) I was hesitant to include Ronja because I remembered her and Birk's relationship as romantic rather than strictly on a sibling-basis, but if I misremember, up it goes.

Ooh, another Librivox enthusiast! I've considered volunteering ever so often, but I'm just not a very good reader, so I'm hesitant. I used to volunteer as a proofreader for Gutenberg-related sites quite a bit a few years back, I love initiatives like these.

[ysilme]

I won't lay my hand into the fire for Ronja and Birk - but I suppose it's left to the reader's interpretation. Their relationship could be considered as a starting romantic one as well, if one wants so - after all, they are just - what - 11? 12?.

It's rare to find someone who knows about librivox at all! I'm not using it much, since I don't listen too often to audiobooks, but I love the idea and the amazing work the people do there, and love to spread the word. I leart about it by a volunteer reader, who even offered me to read one of my fanfics as an audio book! ;o) . It's not on librivox, though, since I didn't think I could give a fanfic into the public domain. It's available on my page in case you're interested.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I know they're very young, but they'd not be the first - even though Lindgren's works are a bit early for the creepy prepubescent love craze that's been going on (looking at you, Terry Pratchett and Philip Pullman!), so you're probably right. I think I'm influenced by the Romeo and Julean set-up of the whole affair here. :)

I didn't even know there were fanfic audiobooks! That's awesome, I'll check it out. :D I love audiobooks, they're great for housework, train rides, and even solo gaming. <3