The Matilda Effect, A guest post by Clare Broyles.

 RHYS BOWEN: Last week my daughter Clare and I celebrated the release of our latest Molly Murphy novel, VANISHED IN THE CROWD. It's Molly 22 (can you believe it?). Since Clare was the primary researcher and instigator of this story, I thought she should talk a little about the driving force behind the story.  Clare?

CLARE BROYLES: I went to high school in the 1980’s. It was a time of hope for women’s lib – the era of big shoulders and girl bosses. We were taught that a woman could do anything that a man could do. But at the same time, my history and literature classes were steeped in only what men had done. In the textbooks of the eighties, men (especially white men) were the explorers, the architects, the poets and heralds of Western civilization. They held the patents, owned the companies, and authored the novels. But more recent scholarship has shown that our textbooks were all wrong.

The dominance of men as innovators and leaders was largely due to the erasing of women’s names from their achievements. The woman who brought the French style of cinematography to early films was described only as a secretary. The woman engineer who completed the Brooklyn bridge, hid her accomplishment so as to not embarrass her bedridden husband (and lose his salary!). Our textbooks lionized Watson and Crick but we never learned about Rosalind Franklin who took the photograph of DNA that enabled their research. For many years scientific discoveries by women had to be in a paper authored by a man in order to be published. So it was natural, but completely untrue, that my high school self thought that men were the designers of the modern world.

This phenomena has a name, “The Matilda effect,” named after suffragist Matilda Gage by the researcher Margaret Rossiter. Her efforts in the 1990’s to restore women’s names to their achievements was labeled activist scholarship, but her volumes on the contributions of women through history have demonstrated  how often women were overlooked or erased. These women include the discoverer of nuclear fission, the woman who discovered the composition of the stars, microbiologists, authors, computers, mathematicians, and even the creator of the game Monopoly!

 This is the dilemma of the fictional Willa Parker in the latest Molly Murphy mystery: Vanished in the Crowd. She is a passionate virologist who can only find work in her husband’s lab and publish her research under his name. Her commitment to her work is meant to be put aside when she has a child and her family given precedence. When she gets on a train for New York and then vanishes, it is by force or by choice? That is the question that Molly Murphy has to answer. She wants to find Willa before her husband does to find out if Willa wants to be rescued, or if she is better off remaining hidden.

Readers of historical fiction might ask, is this anachronistic? Were there really women scientists in 1909 working on the cutting edge of finding a cure for the polio virus? And the answer is yes. There were passionate women scientists persevering against all odds. The reason we as modern readers are surprised is the Matilda effect itself.

It can be hard to rewrite the internal scripts created by the world in which we grew up. Fiction has always been helpful in imagining the world in a different way. In my high school years, science fiction and fantasy allowed me to imagine worlds of powerful women, but current historical fiction portraying women and their accomplishments allows me to rewrite that history in my psyche. Molly Murphy, the character, is growing and changing as she finds herself in the company of suffragists and powerful women. She is starting to believe more in the cause and question the dictates of the society she was born into, just as I have.

What about you? What assumptions from your formative years have you had to rewrite in your mind and your psyche? How have novels helped you learn a new point of view?

Celebrating St. Paddy

RHYS BOWEN: Today is St Paddy’s Day, a great day to celebrate if you are Irish or even if
you are not. Unfortunately one week too late for the release of my new Molly Murphy novel,

which was published last Tuesday. It’s called Vanished in the Crowd and Clare will be writing a guest post about it tomorrow.

But it’s a day for sharing fond Irish memories. I have no Irish ancestry (but being Welsh means fellow Celt) but John has an Irish grandfather and a distinguished Irish ancestry. His great grandfather was one of those selected to be sent to the English parliament to plead for Irish emancipation. His great great grandfather owned the Belfast newspaper and his Quin ancestors are the junior branch of the Earls of Dunraven.

John and I spent a perfect three weeks driving all around Ireland a few years ago. Three weeks with only one day of rain.  That’s a miracle in itself. We had wonderful fresh food, Irish music in pubs and glorious scenery. My memories: the friendliness of the Irish people.  If you stopped to ask for directions it would go something like this: “Well, you turn right at the corner and on the next street you’ll pass a lovely little bakery. You should try their soda bread, only you need to get there before eleven or they'll sell out, and past that is the wool shop and she has some home spun wool there you won’t find anywhere else, and then the fish monger…etc until “and at the next corner you turn left.” It takes half an hour or more.

My favorite direction came when we stayed at a B and B in Tralee. The owner said if we’d a mind for a lovely hike over a waterfall he’d tell us how to get there. He said you drive along the side of the loch and you’ll come to this lovely hotel with a perfect view. Right out into the water, it is. And if you want dinner there at sunset they have a great restaurant.  Now, if you get to that hotel, you’ve gone too far.”

You have to love the Irish

As for St. Patrick’s Day memories: My strangest was that my publisher brought me to New York to do promotion for Molly on St. Patrick’s Day. Royal treatment: limo to drive me around Manhattan to bookstores. Question: where does a limo park while I go in to NY bookstores? And as for the event in the evening? One of the bookstore owners said “I’m sorry but we don’t open on St Patrick’s Day.  Too many drunken men in the streets.”

I don't think there were many drunken Irishmen who said, "You know what, Paddy, let's go to a bookstore and hear Rhys Bowen!" Not one of my better appearances.

!  So dear Reds and Readers, do you have any fond Irish memories? Or St Patrick’s Day memories? 

Jenn, you’ve set books in Ireland. Tell all…

Five Books That Have Stayed With Me.

 RHYS BOWEN: Recently on one of the Facebook groups I browse occasionally I saw a posting about five books that have stayed with you.  This got me thinking about which books I would select. I came up with a list pretty quickly and could certainly go beyond five books.

But here are my five:

Passage, by Connie Willis.  It’s about near death and what happens after death. So thought provoking. That book has haunted me since I read it.  If the list was longer I’d also include her Doomsday Book, which I felt was a masterpiece.

The Handmaid’s Tale.  I suspect this might be on everyone’s list.  It seemed like speculative fiction when we first read it, didn’t it? And now….

Possession, by Byatt. That book had so many layers to admire, including the body of work of two fictitious poets. Wow. I wish I could have written it.

The Lord of the Rings:  I had to include this since it was the first book I read as a teenager that completely obsessed me, swallowed me into another world.  I have read it so many time since then that I think I know it by heart, but I still get chills when I read it again.

Prince of Tides, Conroy.  Another book that was so clever as well as so evocative. Talk about sense of place!

I realize this is my five, without including any mystery novel.  So what do they all have? Thought provoking. Sense of place. Certainly not comfortable reading although LOTR does have a sem-satisfying ending. 

If I had to include a mystery novel, it would be Reginald Hill’s On Beulah Height. Or

Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, or… Dreaming of the Bones by our own Debs.  All three way beyond what a reader has come to expect from a mystery novel.

And as I write this I feel a sigh coming on. I suppose as I come closer to the end of my career I’d love to have written that definitive novel like one of these. Would any of my books ever make a list like this? Maybe the closest would be the Venice Sketchbook.

Your turn Reds. What books are on your lists?

LUCY BURDETTE: We’re covering our ears at the phrase “come closer to the end of my career” Rhys! This is a hard question, because it depends on how the books stayed with me and what was going on in my life at the time. I’m leaving out the Reds though I adore and admire every book my friends have written.

During my growing up days, I would have  chosen GONE WITH THE WIND. That’s the book I took to school to hide in my textbooks so I could keep reading about the incredible saga of Scarlet O’Hara..

Julia Child’s MY LIFE IN FRANCE for her astonishing voice and sense of adventure and love for food and France.

Galit Atlas, EMOTIONAL INHERITANCE. This is from a psychoanalyst who explored the ways that people carry forward trauma and secrets from their families with little idea about how it’s affecting them.

Kent Kreuger’s IRON LAKE introduces a complicated and appealing character, a compelling setting, and powerful conflict–I’ve read everything he’s written since.

THE LOST VINTAGE by Ann Mah tells the story of a present day sommelier who returns to her family’s Burgundy vineyard and discovers layers of historical trauma. Tied with THE ART OF INHERITING SECRETS by Barbara O’Neal. The character inherits a crumbling English estate and a title after her mother's death, leading her to uncover family secrets, explore a new life in a charming village, and navigate a new romance.

What stays with me? Compelling setting, complicated but good-hearted characters with messy family backstories, and usually a happy ending:)

HALLIE EPHRON: What stays with me is always characters. Especially ones I can relate to.

So starting off with my earliest, Sara Crewe from Frances Hodgsen Burnett’s THE LITTLE PRINCESS earned a place in my heart as the little orphan girl who ends up marooned at Miss Minchin’s school for little girls. Fortunately I missed the1939 version with Shirley Temple who (imhop) was far too saccharine to play the feisty, clever, moody Sara.

Then ELOISE, star of the illustrated children’s book by Kay Thompson and illustrated by Hilary Knight. This precocious six-year-old is every nanny’s nightmare.

Then ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne is a plucky (see a theme, here?)  homely, orphaned redhead who is sent to live with her aunt and uncle, Matthew and Marilla. My own children loved it as well.

Several more grownup novels: WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sara Gruen; STONES FROM THE RIVER by Ursula Hegi. And finally one with an adult female heroine (published barely pre-women’s lib)  with whom I so identified, Carol Shields’ THE STONE DIARIES.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, gosh, I think of this from time to time, the books I hope to write.

My five? Books that have stayed with me.

BLACK BEAUTY. Weird,I know, but this is the first book I read where i realized there was such a thing as theme. I remember it so well, finishing and then thinking..wait, I think this is about more than a horse. I bet I was…ten?

THE GOLDEN COMPASS by Phillip Pullman. I was in college, and absolutely transported. Still am.  I put Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, in this section, too. I had never stretched my imagination like that before. Life-changing, both of them.

THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, by TH White. I still think about this book all the time: justice, honor, community. Magic. How the boundaries on maps are only on those maps. People created them. And it has been a problem ever since.

WINTER’S TALE, by Mark Helprin. Absolutely magical. A perfect book. An adventure, time travel, love, justice, journalism, possibilities. (NOT the movie, run away, run away.)

SO what’s my fifth? Ah, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD? Gillian MacAllister’s WRONG PLACE, WRONG TIME (I know, but that book is a total wow.) 

Oh, wait, I know, Edith Wharton’s THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY. Still so timely, female empowerment, the mores of society, ambition,  and no one is better at dialogue.

JENN McKINLAY: Like Hallie, Anne of Green Gable was a pivotal read for me. I just loved Anne with an “e” so much.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis. My first fantasy and forever my favorite.

One for the Money by Janet Evanovich where I learned how to write found family and over the top capers. 

Circe by Madeline Miller which proved to me I could love literary fiction.

Nettle & Bone by T.  Kingfisher. One of the most imaginative fairy tales I’ve read. Loved, loved, loved it! 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Gosh, this is hard! Like Jenn, my earliest will be THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. Hooked me on fantasy and made me an Anglophile in one fell swoop.

PETER PAN for Barrie’s gorgeous omniscient narration; a children’s book that’s even more meaningful for adults. “All children, except one, grow up.”

Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM, which I read fairly young and therefore without expectations. I was blown away by how real and painful his metaphor became, and will never forget the last line: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

THE STAND by Stephen King. I read it the year it came out in (impossibly thick) paperback, and it lingers as one of the most terrifying views of an apocalypse ever.

SEPTEMBER by Rosamund Pilcher - so many characters brought to life! Such loving descriptions of the setting and mores of the well-to-do Scots and English. Plus a galloping, irresistible plot. It’s like rolling up Dickens, Trollope and Barbara Bradford Taylor in one enormous doorstop. 

So, my takeaways? All except for King are British authors. I like big, expansive stories. And I love fantastical worlds that seem completely grounded in reality.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: So interesting to see where overlap and where we differ! And so hard to narrow down to five.

A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L'Engle. 6th grade. The first book that really introduced me to the power of good prose, and world building.

THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE by C S Lewis. More fabulous world building, and surely a big contributor to Anglophilia.

LORD OF THE RINGS by J R R Tolkien. Ditto, but more so!

THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING by T H White. Gorgeous, funny, heart-rending, and it started me on an obsession with Arthurian England that lasted for years.

It occurs to me now that all four of these books are about good vs evil and moral choices, and I still think about these stories every day.

GAUDY NIGHT by Dorothy L. Sayers, in order to get in a mystery. This is the book that showed me what you could do within a mystery. And it made me fall in love with Oxford.

RHYS: Isn't it interesting that we have overlapped so much? And when I wrote my list I didn't think of children's books I've loved all my life. Black Beauty... oh how I loved that book. And The Hobbit. And the Chronicles of Narnia.  I still re-read them.

So, dear Reddies, how about you???