Jane Sexes It Up

I have to write another post about this book for a book club and am feeling very resentful of it. There are a myriad of reasons for this, that I won't go into on this semi-anonymous forum, but if this post is especially sketchy, you will know that it is because I am working on something more professional, less personal about the same damn book.

First off, this book was published about ten years ago and feels incredibly dated. Remember when radical feminists defended Bridget Jones' Diary? Yeah, it was before we had to hear about how "fat" Renee Zellweger for for the movie role. And before Carrie married Big (sorry for the spoiler, but seriously? If you cared, you knew). It was a golden era before reality shows co-opted bisexuality and teenagers weren't getting their nether-regions plucked by professionals. When being aggressively sexy, even to the point of being paid for it, seemed transgressive. Now, frankly, I'm tired of it. Is it our pornified culture? My own (further) experience with sexual exploitation? Have I had too many sex workers assume that I'm repressed because I have a "straight" job? Yeah, pretty much. But frankly, even that bores me. If I can be a little cranky about third wave feminism for awhile (this is not common): ladies, are we planning on DOING anything? Or are we going to stay in our cocoon of theory and our own experience? Will we reach out to people with different experiences or just "be aware" of them?

That said, the intro chapter was extremely difficult for me, because it hit very close to home. I don't want to read on because I feel like I'm confronted by my radical (naive) 20 year old self. The one who didn't see the problem with being independent and being in love, who was unabashedly sexual (in public), who lived--and thrived--in contradictions. I am too tired for that anymore.

The Gathering by Anne Enright

I usually don't just read books that win fancy prizes, but it looks like that's how the library reserve list is working lately--I just finished On Chesil Beach (Galaxy Book of the Year); I will read Tree of Smoke (National Book Award); and am about halfway through The Gathering (Man Booker Prize).
I'm enjoying The Gathering more than On Chesil Beach. I know that we're all supposed to love Ian McEwan, but honestly, not so much. He's good, but I'm not really blown away. I get really tired of the limited perspective of his characters (which, okay, is the point, I know) and the miscommunication with each other (ditto). It's not that these situations don't ring true, it's that I don't care about the conventional characters or the everyday plot.
To counterpoint, here is Enright (not writing about McEwan, natch):
"I can twist them as far as you like, here on the page; make them endure all kinds of protraction, bliss, mindlessness, abjection, release. I can bend and reconfigure them in the rudest possible ways, but my heart fails me, there is something so banal about things that happen behind closed doors, these terrible transgressions that are just sex after all." (139-40)
It's just sex, just alcoholism, just grief, just suicide. These things are all very important when they happen to us, individually or as families or communities, but let's not pretend that they are unusual. We may be caught in our own minds and in our own ways of understanding the world, but that doesn't mean that we are unaware of the world outside of our skins.