The fourth book in my 26 book challenge was Geling Yan’s The Uninvited.
This is the second book in the challenge that’s been authored by a woman. It’s interesting to note that, in the case of this and the first, To Kill A Mockingbird, for a time it was easy to read in ignorance of the author’s sex. But The Uninvited seems to take it further. With its quasi-erotic descriptions of “massage parlours” and general hormonal leeriness, it’s so clearly written from the point of view of the male gaze that it’s easy to forget who the author is. (Indeed, most of the comments people offered upon seeing the book – the few that weren’t “are you actually reading a book in Chinese?” – were about how salacious the cover appeared.) I don’t have any profound conclusions to draw from this observation, but I find it interesting.
But perhaps it’s unimportant. Why should a female author any less write with the male gaze than a male one? Is she better or worse qualified to do so? What do you think?
Al Online 