Stars and stripes

Welcome to Book Week: Summer and Happy 4th July! Today’s theme is Stars and Stripes and is all about American fiction, in celebration of this American holiday.

When I decided to do an American fiction day, I assumed that it would all be guest posts and was hoping to get some of my favourite expats to write something (and, thankfully, I have, so you don’t need to put up with me wittering on all day), until I started thinking about American fiction and realised that I do actually have a lot of feeling for American fiction, of different kinds.

American children’s fiction

The America of my childhood seemed to be all about big open spaces and a history of exploration and pioneering. I was (and still am when I can be) a re-reader and I read Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn so many times that I could feel myself there painting the whitewash or riding down the Mississippi. I identified more with Tom and Huck than with Becky Thatcher – in fact, she wound me up a lot. And then there were Little Women, Little Men and Jo’s Boys – I liked the sassier Jo the best. I think there was a certain fascination with this world that was so close, and yet so far from our own.

As I got older, I developed an affinity for Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley High books. American High School seemed so glamorous to me in my early years at secondary school and both these series helped kickstart my journey into genre fiction – crime and romance. I remember one of the things that I marvelled at the most in the Sweet Valley High books was that all the kids had their own phones in their rooms and would chat to their friends for hours on end without getting told off. At the time, we’d only just got a phone in our house, having previously had to traipse up to the phone box near the church to phone relatives and friends. And I was certainly not allowed to sit on the phone for hours at a time.

American fiction

The wide open space and the appeal of the slightly, but not totally different, carries through into my preferences for adult American fiction. John Steinbeck is a big favourite and I am pleased to say that I had already read East of Eden before we sere set Of Mice and Men in English class. The Grapes of Wrath has to be my favourite, though. Steinbeck’s journey through the Depression is astoundingly real and you can taste the hunger and the despair. But you also catch a glimpse of what ‘family’ can really mean.

I’m also big John Irving fan and read and reread A Prayer for Owen Meaney, The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules and The Hotel New Hampshire and I can still feel a shiver at the words ‘Keep passing the open windows’. Irving’s characters are colourful and often quite strange and the scenarios in which they find themselves can be stranger still, and yet it still comes across with a feeling of reality.

American genre fiction

And then we come to the genre fiction, where I have probably read more American writers than any other. Crime is the main genre I consume here, though also some chicklit and fantasy and horror. Some of the American crime authors who pepper my shelves include Patricia Cornwell, Faye Kellerman (come back on Wednesday for some reviews), Tess Gerritsen (again, come back on Wednesday for a review), Tami Hoag, Kathy Reichs and Karin Slaughter. The main American chicklit author I read is Jodi Picoult, whose gut-wrenching stories have me staying up late turning the pages, while at the same time feeling a little guilty at a feeling of voyeurism. For fantasy, Raymond E Feist, especially his collaborative Empire series, written with Janny Wurtz, provides an invented world that feels as large and open (and mysterious, while similar) as America. And, of course, for epic American novels you cannot beat Stephen King. I think a lot of the pictures of America in my head come from reading his books.

What are your favourite American children’s and adult’s books? Do you think that American writers bring to their oeuvre a sense of the wide open spaces around them that the British (for example) can’t recapture? (Sorry, does that sounds like a book club question?)

Come back at 1pm and 3pm (UK time) for two guest posts about American literature.