See, now all that there’s going to be a change of direction round here angst from yesterday is starting to make sense isn’t it?
I’ve just finished reading A Bad Day for Sorry: A Crime Novel by (first-time novelist!) Sophie Littlefield, and I loved it: and I’m someone who doesn’t normally read crime novels. In fact, after I’d finished reading Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy during my recuperation from surgery last year, I thought I’d never pick up another crime novel again. As far as I was concerned, Larsson was it, and no one, ever, was going to be able to top his accomplishment. (Note to Melanie Newman – I couldn’t disagree with your F Word review more, Larsson is so a feminist ally!)
And to be honest, Sorry doesn’t top Larsson’s work, but only because Sophie Littlefield’s writing style and approach are so completely different it’s actually impossible to make a comparison between the two: so I won’t attempt to. Suffice to say that having avoided reading crime novels for what seems like aeons, I’ve now realised just how diverse a category it is. I’m really looking forward to reading some more.
But anyway, back to the book.
A Bad Day for Sorry is set in rural Missouri and has as its main protagonist a 50+ year old woman, Stella Hardesty. Now a few years prior to the story’s beginning, Hardesty had finished off her abusive husband with a wrench and managed to get off with it in court, and as the story unfolds we learn that she has now made it her life’s work to help other women deal with their own abusive husbands and boyfriends.
So as a sideline to her day job of running a perfectly respectable sewing shop in her hometown, Stella Hardesty works outside of the law “convincing” some men of the error of their ways. As the blurb on the jacket says: “some men need more convincing than others, but it’s usually nothing a little light bondage or old-fashioned whuppin’ can’t fix.”
And if that all sounds a bit dark to you, trust me, it’s not: it’s bloody funny.
Here’s the prologue for a taster:
Whuppin’ ass wasn’t so hard, Stella Hardesty thought as she took aim with the little Raven .25 she took off a cheating son-of-a-bitch in Kansas City last month.
What was hard was making sure it stayed whupped
Especially on a day when it hit a hundred degrees before noon. And you were having hot flashes. And today’s quote on your Calendar for Women Who Do Too Much read “Find serenity in unexpected places.”
“Fuck serenity,” Stella said. And she shot the trailer.
When I first saw the book advertised (on a publisher’s blog, via Twitter) I found it really hard to imagine how domestic abuse and vigilante justice could be portrayed in any kind of light-hearted way, in fact that was what intrigued me enough to buy the book in the first place. And I’m relieved to say that that’s not how Littlefield tackles the more serious issues: she manages instead to get the balance just right, between the humour on the one hand, and an obvious contempt for male abuse on the other.
Stella Hardesty meanwhile is a great heroine: she’s feisty, compassionate, and above all she’s absolutely bloody fearless and determined. And I love her and want to be her. Well okay, without the violence and the sewing obviously (but let’s be honest, being Stella is a far more realistic aspiration for me than my previous one of wanting to be Lisbeth Salander!)
Here’s an extract from an interview with Sophie Littlefield, where she explains her inspiration for Stella:
“I was smack in the middle of my forties and having a bad week. Arriving at middle age in America, for a woman, is both liberating and irritating. I had a great time magnifying the everyday annoyances – failing vision, creeping waistline, parenting adult kids, youth-obsessed media – and setting them up against the bigger ones, like the expectations that mature women should keep their mouths shut and stay out of the way.”
Yep, tell me about it Sophie…..
I’m delighted to see that A Bad Day for Sorry is the first of a series, so this isn’t the last we’ll be hearing of Stella Hardesty. A Bad Day for Pretty is due out later in the year, and it seems there are even more Stella books in the pipeline. I’ve already pre-ordered the next one, and I suspect once you’re read A Bad Day for Sorry you’ll be doing the same.
Too Much To Say For Myself 
Sounds a bit action-filled for my tastes (I like crime novels to be either classic English murder mystery whodunits, slow-boiling psychological puzzles, or of the forensics-centred type), but hell yes, there are too few heroic justice-dealing female protagonists.
The FWord article on Steig Larsson pretty much nailed all the problems I had with his books (read 2 of the 3 so far). I don’t doubt that he wanted to present violence against women in a more political/social context than just as springboards for a crime story, but I don’t think he quite got it. For one thing, the “feisty” woman character who can physically fight back, while still often very satisfying to see, is a very simplistic response in fiction/drama to the problem of women’s oppression. And the description of the abuse and grisly violence done to the female victims in book one was no less sensationalist and near-voyeuristic just because a woman plays a large part in bringing down the perpetrators.
But my main gripe was that bloody journalist fella. Everything I read beforehand about the books said, yay! here is a wonderful female protagonist. Then I read the books and couldn’t believe how much there was of that bloke’s story and perspective to wade through. Why does nearly every single female character, including Salander, and one of the key victims from the first book, end up having sex with him? Why do I have to care about the fortunes of his magazine? Why can’t Salander’s main ally be another woman? Or the women of that rock group she is mentioned as hanging out with, mostly in back-story. Moreover, Salander herself is very othered. Although there is a fair amount of the story told from her point of view, at other times she is enigmatic, a mystery to be solved by this het white socially privileged man. Plus the way that she too is sexually victimised – I would have really preferred it if evil lawyer could still have been her personal big bad to be outwitted without that him raping her (plus there’s the whole coping-with-rape by getting away perfectly with wreaking physical, complicated revenge – at once satisfying to read yet also niggling in its impossibility as a realistic response).
I did enjoy the first two books, read them both through non-stop, but swung constantly between: how cool, a woman character in this Jason Bourne-esque role; and go away wossname journalist guy!
I did disagree with the F-Word commentary on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I think, if you’re looking for a feminist crime thriller, then, for all its problems, it’s probably one of the better ones. It still has women as victims, for example, but so do the vast majority of crime novels, and I did feel that Larsson was clearly angry about violence against women. It simmers, only barely below the surface. Actually, that was my main problem with it: that the anger was a little too clearly on the part of the author, rather than generated by the storyline itself – because it’s not really a plot that has anything massively intelligent to say about men who hate and hurt women. And Salander seemed a bit of a cliched, male-wish-fulfillment character. Still a very, very good book though.
The Littlefield looks interesting: I now want to check it out, so thank you for this. For info, it’s very recently been nominated for an Edgar, which is the crime fiction equivalent of the Oscars:
http://www.theedgars.com/nominees.html
Sounds great! I’m always looking for new reads.
thank you so much for this. made my day and then some….
– sophie
Thanks for the recommendation Cath, will definately check this out. Still fantasising about being Lisbeth Salander myself, need to snap out of it! 🙂
OK, I have to read this.
I completely agree re: the Milennium trilogy, too.
I too want to be Lisbeth Salander. She KICKS ASS.
Sorry Cath but can I interrupt your blog with a security announcement.
I approved a comment on my blog from ‘a concerned citizen’ which had gone into spam. I then noticed that – guess what – when I pointed to the ‘Edit comment’ bit on wordpress, a file sharing program from ‘underworld appeared’.
Since you are part of the ‘radscum’ tendency it appears that the little darlings have decided to play nasty.
polly – I’m not techy enough to know if that was a virus spreading thing? But I am sorry if that is what you mean, and it’s a shame that you have forced to delete your blog (again).
The fact that i could spot it makes me think it might not have been that sophisticated, but I’m taking no chances, am typing this from a friends while I find out what it was.
Cath – Many thanks for the recommendation on ‘A bad day for sorry’. I finished reading it in the early hours of this morning and loved it. The style of the book reminded me of the very early Janet Evanovich books, but better.
Sophie Littlefield has created a wonderful character in Stella and I really hope there will be a follow up book, I want to know more about Stella and her work.