Mirrors and Windows
In teaching and libraries, we use a term called Mirrors and Windows to describe books. Mirrors are books which reflect your own experience back to you – the character shares your race, your gender identity, your ethnicity, etc. Windows are books which allow you to see into another person’s experience. Perhaps you are a Christian reading about Muslims, or an able-bodied person reading about a disability.
Obviously, most of the time, it’s the overall quality of the book that determines whether or not I’ll enjoy it, not the mirror or window. I’ve read and enjoyed books featuring characters who do and don’t share my sexuality, who do and don’t share my race, who do and don’t share my geographic location, etc.
But a few mirrors and windows are very highly correlated with whether or not I’ll like the book – and the reason is rooted in my experience, not the book’s quality.
Depressed protagonists are mirrors for me, and reading them is never a pleasant experience. When I read a character with depression, I channel all of the self-loathing I have for myself onto the character with depression: “What do you mean you ‘can’t get up?’ Did someone break your legs? There are people in prison with COVID-19 and you’re ‘depressed,’ you self-indulgent twerp?” I KNOW this is not the right reaction to depression, and I KNOW this is not healthy – and I KNOW I’m better off just not reading these books.
One exception: the nonfiction mind-bogglingly brilliant Hyperbole and a Half, by Allie Brosh, which will make you cry not just for its hilarity but for the feeling that finally, finally, someone understands.
By contrast, athlete heroines are completely unlike what I see in the mirror, but I adore them. I come from a long line of un-sporty women (my mother famously earned exactly one A in PE, when she fell asleep on the gym floor during the relaxation unit). And yet I LOVE reading about athlete heroines. These heroines tend to have wonderful relationships with their bodies, and it’s so nice to read about women who love their builds and revel in the feeling of their bodies pushing the limits of their capabilities. I also put well-executed dancer characters in this category, because when it comes to body mastery, dancers may take the top prize. I love how their partners admire the bodies that they’ve worked for, not bodies that just happen to look a certain way from birth. As Ainslie Paton’s hero muses about his pole-dancer heroine in Offensive Behavior, “what he craved, what made him almost sick with desire was the iron discipline, the determination and single-mindedness that led her to master these skills.” UGH SO SEXY.
Basically, if romance is an escape, I love to escape into a world where I have the self-discipline to get myself into the state of fitness where my body can do whatever I ask of it. Even if I ask something more difficult than falling asleep on the floor (which, by the way, I am a BOSS at).
Here are a few of the romances I love with this window: Offensive Behavior by Ainslie Paton, Remember Summer by Elizabeth Lowell – the book on the whole isn’t strong but the horseback riding scenes are everything I dreamed of when I was twelve, Pas de Deux by Lynn Turner, Take the Lead by Alexis Daria, Summer’s End by Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Kiss and Cry by Mina V. Esguerra, Summer is for Lovers by Jennifer McQuiston (historical with an athlete heroine!).
What about you? Are there some windows and mirrors that you gravitate towards or away from because of your personal experiences? Can you think of a depression romance which might work for me, or an athlete heroine I haven’t read yet and should try?
I’m having some issues with accessing the website. I have not been here for a week or so, but last night I logged on and was forced to do one of those ‘captcha’ things where you have to identify all the pictures with a bicycle or whatever. Even switching between screens within the website I had to do that. I’m on a smallish screen and I have vision problems, so those tiny captcha pictures are a nightmare for me. If I only had to do it once I’d cope. But every time I changed to a different book review or went from the home page to the ask page, or even to different ask pages, I had to do it. Is this necessary?
It is right now. AAR has, for the past months, been under an incredible bot attack that is crashing our site again and again. We have been advised to do this for a few days. I plan to turn it off tomorrow and see if it helped.
OK! Thanks for letting me know so quickly.
I never got the bot but it wouldn’t let me into this page for about 24 hours. The rest of the site yes, but not this page. It happened with the sports books recommendations for days as well. I think it’s me.
I doubt it. We are besieged. And the software that runs the original data base is dense and takes up a lot of memory. It’s been a challenging time.
No it’s not you. I was unable to access theMirrors and Windows thread for two days. Get the Error accessing database message. Everything else fine.
Obviously it’s okay now.
We are slowly making fixes. I am hopeful we will solve the problems that have been plaguing us since April.
Good luck, and sppedy solutions!
The bummer is fixing is it is expensive. But we are slowly making headway.
Good luck! I hope it’s going well. I hate to post when there is a problem because I feel like it sounds like I am complaining. I don’t mean to. Sometimes I don’t know if it’s something you are aware of or not. I can’t imagine how hard it is to transition/fix things when the site is up and accessed all the time. Keep up the great work! We appreciate it!
For many years when I was younger I tended to mainly read about heroines that were closer to my personality type, readers, “bluestockings” – the more prim and proper Misses from respectable homes who were looking for some genteel adventure (or who fell into it). I wanted more fairytale type stories with one true loves and happily ever afters.
As I grew older, I stopped looking for the exact same heroine and the exact same traits in the books I read. I became more of a connoisseur of what was actually good rather than what just played to the parameters I had set. Lavyrle Spencer was an author that helped shake me out of my box many decades ago. Books like “Morning Glory” made me redefine what a romance was or could be.
“Outlander” was another book that shook up the recognized tropes for me. I read it when it first came out (I still have my first edition hardback) and there was no internet, no other reader interaction (at least for me) and I remember taking time to come to terms with the things that happened. (This was back when I was about Jamie’s age in the first book) and I often think about how devastated I was with Dragonfly In Amber because they were separated for so long and now they were SO OLD. Now I’m more like their age on Fraser’s Ridge, and have a different appreciation of older Jamie and Claire.
Like Dabney said, I look for similar feelings and outlooks rather than physical characteristics now so a super athletic heroine with a similar worldview is easier for me to relate to than a scholar that does crazy stuff. Having read so many romances I do enjoy the “different” as well as the familiar so reading about women who have wildly different lives than mine or make opposite choices is very freeing. I get that chance to walk in their shoes, see things a little differently (hopefully) and not just reflect back more of the same at myself.
To Chrisreader – the Outlander saga was definitely a startling new window for me as well! Having always shied away from time travel, I came to it after watching (on some obscure TV satellite channel) one night the first two episodes of season one of the Starz series. I was immediately hooked and my Amazon account took a direct hit as I ordered all 8 books the next morning and read them one after the other in frank amazement and in one of my all time “Reader Highs”. It was almost like being drugged. A close friend joined me and we powered through the books together, discussing it all in detail as we went and watched all of the back series then available together in awe and delight. We await the 9th book and season 6.
Both the books and the series lost me in France in book two. I am going to go back to the TV show–I love the premise and Claire is amazing.
Jamie isn’t too shabby either!! Be still my beating heart ;-)
I have no idea what you’re talking about. “bats eyes”
I truly think Jamie has reached that Rhett Butler/Mr. Darcy status where millions of people have just fallen in love with him on the page and/or on the screen. Flawless casting.
Oh I felt that. Here’s my old blog post on Heughan/Fraser. Sam Heughan: A Romance Hero for the Ages
Oh that was great! I don’t know how I missed it the first time around. I’m kind of astounded Balfe and Heughan have never taken home any awards here in the U.S. They do such solid, subtle work in those roles year after year. Even the most dramatic moments with them ring true.
Oh I felt that. Here’s my old blog post on Heughan/Fraser. Sam Heughan: A Romance Hero for the Ages
The amount of sexual violence turned me off somewhere around the third member of the Fraser family getting attacked. I gave the books up back then and have come and gone from them over the years as my nerves would stand. I kind of came back when the TV series started. I was amazed as I never thought they would be able to translate the books in such a rich and nuanced way. The actors are simply amazing. The changes from the book work very well (although I am less of a Frank fan than the show’s creator is). People will ask me often “Was that in the book?” and they have blurred so much for me that I will have to check. It’s funny that people who wouldn’t touch the book Outlander back in the 90’s when I was pressing it on anyone just to have someone to talk about it with now are obsessed with the show! And it’s pretty equally split amongst men and women. I think men can be more romantic than we give them credit for. Plus Jamie really is a renaissance man and kind of Uber manly in his own way so men respond well to him too.
I was invested a lot in Claire and Jamie and really loved the books, in their huge cast, complicated plotting and lovely personalities – so well drawn. The only other saga that ever compared was Lymond by Dorothy Dunnett.
Yes, the amount of sexual violence turned me off, too, at some point. That was the first block I had.
And then I got brutal fatigue as the story has no end in sight.
And is too complicated to remember from one installment to the next, so it would entail massive rereading, every time. I have stopped and decided to start again when there is an end already. This is in no way criticism, Diana Gabaldon should do what she wants to do, I hugely admire her capabilities and storytelling, they are a gift to all of us, I just withdrew.
Liselotte- I understand the fatigue completely! I hit that in the books more so than the show. At several points I felt like “just give these two some peace or a happy ending now they are getting close to retirement age” Lol.
After Game Of Thrones (both the books so far and the show) I am always worried about how things will end up in a series. I do have much more faith in the producers of Outlander however. (I think the GOT guys just wanted to wrap up the show, cash out and be done.) The fact that Gabaldon is still writing episodes for Outlander shows me how involved she is and how much care they are taking with the story.
Before the show began I swore to myself I would only pick the series up again once the ending had been written because the books were stressing me out and I needed closure. But the lure of the show was too great and in some odd way, because I can turn the TV off or look away it doesn’t haunt me like the books did. Or I am just much older as well.
“how I feel about the ending of Game of Thrones“
That looks like me when I realized the spoilers online were actually true. I think people avoided me for about a week after it aired I was so enraged.
Skip to book 3, you can go back and read book book 2 if you want at another time.
I agree about book 2. I have not been able to read further in the series. I had better luck with her Lord John books/novellas, though. She is a very good writer. I am not sure why I got stuck.
I want not to be stuck!
I remember being amazed after a few books in the series were published that I would see men come into the bookstore and ask for them and were reading them. And not young guys either, middle aged and older guys were reading them back in the late 1990’s. It blew me away as Outlander was most definitely marketed as a romance when it first came out. It really is a story for everyone who likes a great story and characters. But I still say Gabaldon is wrong and it is 100% a romance.
I got a bad start in the 90s when someone gave me Dragonfly in Amber telling me I would love it. I took it home and by page 50 gave up because, of course, as a stand alone it just doesn’t work. So, 20+ years later …….. ;-) I see it, like you, Chrisreader as HR/ historical fiction and the time travel element is jus an acceptable plot device and the spice in the stew.
Last summer we took friends from California on a 3 week touring holiday in the Scottish highlands. Every neolithic site we visited (and there are many) we saw at least one female tourist with her hands on a standing stone. I did it too, as a joke, and my husband (also a fan of the TV series) just rolled his eyes. At Culloden on the battlefield there are stones engraved with the names of the clans who fought and died. I went looking for my maiden name, Maclean, and found the stone next to the Frasers and it was covered with flowers. I also discovered the Macleans were on the losing side.
I can’t imagine someone giving you the second book in a series to start with! Talk about bad advice, lol. Dragonfly in Amber was a really bitter pill for me to swallow because I had no idea it was coming.
I read Outlander as a stand alone and was incredibly satisfied with it (even though it really shook me up emotionally). I was really kind of angry when I found out about Dragonfly. I didn’t buy it immediately. I remember getting to the counter with it in the bookstore (the now defunct Waldenbooks) the day it came out and then turning around and putting it back on the display table. I checked and my copy of that book is a second edition- so I had to take some time emotionally to work up to buying it.
Which all sounds silly, it’s a book series right? But I think it shows how invested in the story you become as a reader and or a viewer. Your trip sounds really fun too!
And I think pretty much most of Scotland, at least the Highlanders, were on the losing side. I think only the MacLeods avoided Culloden because they lost so many people in the 1715 uprising they were given a pass
The Outlander saga is by far the best book/series I’ve ever read after almost 60 years of hardcore reading. Some of the books are more engaging than others; Dragonfly was a snore-fest for the first half of the book; Snow and Ashes is too long and has too many pointless sub-plots. But the main characters are fully-fleshed, brave, determined, and unwavering in their commitment to each other and to family. I see these as adventure novels, not romance novels, and I think that is why they often appeal to men. There is a strong romantic element, but the books are about the great adventure of life in a very dangerous time. And that is what keeps me coming back to the OutlanderVerse.
I think the show has done a mostly wonderful job of adapting the source material, and for non-readers it is a great way to enter the Outlander world. The casting has been perfection, and Sam is so good as Jamie he all but disappears into the role. He has captured Jamie as a slightly awkward young man experiencing romantic love for the first time, his strong inner core that keeps him intact in the face of extreme brutality, his ability to give his heart in its entirety, and his wisdom as he matures. He has created the rock that all the other actors have stood upon, even though they are all excellent, too. I hope at some point he is recognized for his work on Outlander, he certainly deserves it!
Wow! That’s quite an endorsement. Now I want to give both the books and the show another chance!
You must! Worth every page, scene, etc. And the stunning amount of research Diana Gabaldon did will will amaze you. I spent as much time reading up on topics brought up in the books as I did in actually reading them. Yes, there are some appallingly brutal scenes in both the series and the books though they are not, in my view gratuitous. The final 2 episodes of Series One should have won awards for both Sam Heughan and Tobias Menzies.
Elaine, totally agree! Both book and series are excellent, detailed, and engrossing. I don’t think the violence is gratuitous either, it shows the victims eventually going on to grow and thrive in spite of it. I think that’s a good message.
Dabney, if I were you I’d skip Dragonfly, at least the Paris part. You can read it later if you feel so inclined, but I found it really tedious. Eventually I did force myself to read the whole thing front to back, but it took me years to work up to it. Back then there were no online synopses of books as there are now, so those might answer your questions about plot points. Or I would be happy to as well. The show covers the main points of Book 2 pretty well also, and at least there is some gorgeous clothing and backdrops to look at along the way.
The violence is often brutal, I agree. But it was a brutal and dangerous time, especially for women. I love Claire’s resilience and refusal to be victimized, and in the show there’s a fabulous scene in season two where she tells Dougal exactly what she thinks of him. I wanted to applaud! He was such a jackass to her on so many occasions, it was lovely to see her calmly tell him off.
The last two episodes of season one did deserve all sorts of awards, imo. The acting between Sam and Tobias was incredible and it must have been tough to get through. They are both excellent actors, but they elevated each other’s performance in those scenes.
I follow several FB groups about Outlander, and invariably some man (its always a man) will come along and talk about how brutal those scenes are, how it turned him away from ever watching the show again, and yada yada. I think male reaction to such an explicit and cruel male/male rape scene is a big reason this didn’t win awards. The women, even those who are rape survivors and had a difficult time viewing it, understand and respect that moment for what it is. And it’s such an important part of Jamie’s life, it informs his growth and compassion for the rest of his life. He also struggles with PTSD and issues of forgiveness well into his 50s because of those events.
Having said all of that, these books are not for everyone. They are filled with emotionally tough scenes, they are VERY long, and they could have certainly used some tough love from a good editor. And there are two more to go before the book series is done, then there will be a prequel. I know lots of folks who have given up on the books, and life is too short to read something you don’t enjoy. Nevertheless, I encourage you to try again. You may fall in love, who knows?
I loved Season One and agree that Sam and Tobias were phenomenal. My husband had a hard time watching but he loved that season as well. And the smallpox story in Season Two is interesting. But the politics in France–in both the book and the show–are, to us, dull. (And I am a political junkie.) I think, when we start again, we will indeed skip Paris this go round.
The whole Paris thing is kind of an Outlier in the books I think. They are both fish out of water there and it’s in contrast to the other books where it’s kind of Jamie and Claire against “nature” as well as people. Paris is more about intrigue and it’s not where they shine. There is something about Jamie and Claire and the elements and forging new places either on land or sea that just works better.
And in Paris they really fall apart as a couple, they are constantly lying to everyone and Jamie is still recovering from his ordeal at the hands of Black Jack. Mistrust between them grows, and it’s very unpleasant to watch. The best thing about Paris is Fergus, followed by Master Raymond. Otherwise, it’s perfectly safe to skip to the second half of the show or book. Like I said, I’ll fill you in on any questions you have.
I am rewatching all of Outlander again, in the quiet of very early morning and have just finished the parts of series 2 which takes place in Paris. I kept in mind some of the comments here about the Paris episodes. Yes, they may be fish out of water but I tried to get into Claire’s mind because, never mind 1744, she knows what will happen in 1789 and one day in America she will meet the Marquis de Lafayette. Jamie is a well-educated man, he studied in France and is no one’s fool so I think the intrigue in Paris is attractive to him and he understands the politics of the Auld Alliance but it could never, ever be a home for either him or Claire.
And to KesterGayle, it is for me, too, the best series I have ever read. And re-read.
You guys have me sold. It’s next, after we finish Line of Duty.
Elaine, isn’t it glorious?
Paris is an anomaly in the story and slippage imo. But there are events that happen there that are relevant in later books, especially book 8.
Slippage should be skippable. Autocorrect. What are you gonna do?
There are definitely romances where I’ve felt a connection to a character because of a common trait, such as in Elle Pierson’s (now writing as Lucy Parker) first book, Artistic License, about an introverted art student who falls in love but hesitates to share her life with the hero unless she is assured that he really understands how much space and solitude an introvert needs. I had similar conversations with my partner that eerily replicated those in the novel about sharing a life with someone who needs to be separate and alone lots of the time. It really is one of those, “it’s not you, it’s me” kind of things. I felt that Lucy Parker really understood this issue beyond just researching it. Introverts have popped up in other Parker’s books since, much to my happiness. Conversely, extroverts and loud, attention seekers like the heroine in Ainslie Paton’s The Love Coupon, really bothered me beyond logic. Reading that novel felt like listening to nails on a chalkboard. Perhaps it was the execution and another author could have pulled off the characterization, perhaps, but it’s hard to remember a time when I’ve been more annoyed by a single character and one who is supposed to be lovable and entertaining. The hero is an introvert and the thought of those two enjoying a happy ever after rings so false.
There have been severe mental health issues in my family which, fortunately, I do not suffer from but I had to deal with them on an “up close and personal” basis for many years. Therefore, I would not wish to read about these issues in fiction although I recently read and found very interesting Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker which is about a family in Colorado where 6 of the 12 children suffered from acute schizophrenia and bi-polar illnesses. It was a very well done study and the family’s history was interspersed with information about the nature of these illnesses, the history of research, the drugs used, the conclusions reached (eg. nature, nurture, genetic?) etc. It was non-fiction but would I read a novel with characters with these issues? Most likely not – mental health issues are a mirror I don’t really like looking into although the damaged hero is a favourite of mine. The damaged hero is nearly always helped/redeemed by the heroine. Life-long depression, which was in my family, is not usually “cured”.
I think I gravitate towards windows. I have always had great intellectual curiosity in certain areas of history: social, cultural, art, etc. I tend to read mainly HR though geographical settings can entice me in CR. I am reading a really entertaining book right now set in Nome, Alaska. Loving it! I’ve always wanted (and now never will) to visit Alaska and so I do enjoy reading CR set there.
I have to think about this some more. I often find that if I share the emotions of character, I relate to them no matter what their gender, race, culture. (I suspect that’s a hallmark of white privilege.)
That said, there are certainly stories that tell of lives so far outside my own experiences that they are windows and those stories are often an instructive gift. Reading Middlesex changed the way I saw gender–it was the first book I’d ever read that explored gender identity in a way that made it starkly real to me. Long Shot illuminated the choices of a someone who stays in an abusive relationship with such sympathy–it made me want to write checks to every woman’s shelter around. The Hate You Give was on my mind all weekend–I knew, prior to reading it, about the deadliness of American culture to black males but that book’s deft prose brings it to life so inescapably that it’s hard for me to imagine anyone reading it and not coming away committed to racial justice.
When we did our AAR Loves list about parenting, you wrote eloquently about seeing a mirror of postpartum depression in Maybe This a Time by Joan Kilby. That’s an example of an issue where a lack of mirror stories has really hurt women – so many people experiencing this think they must be awful people because they are the only ones they know with postpartum depression. Mirror stories help us see we aren’t evil or broken freaks.
https://allaboutromance.com/aar-loves-romances-featuring-realistic-parent-child-relationships/
Absolutely.