Male Writers and Romance

Male Writers and Romance

I read a lot more fiction by women than men, so this is my personal experience from the limited amount of authors I know. In general, when it comes to sex, men tend to be more rough and tumble—even violent, without any emotional stake or at least more concerned with the physicality of the act, or sweetly romantic.

Sweetly Romantic

In The 13^th Hour by Richard Doetsch, the main character must go back in time hour by hour, an interesting and unusual take on time travel, to save his murdered wife, about whom he says they never just had sex. They always made love—aww. Plot flaw—items that existed in the past became doubled when he carried them on his person as he traveled back, but there were never two of him. Otherwise, clever idea, though the excess of telling what was going on instead of showing it through action or dialogue did dampen the tension.

Dean Koontz’s main character, Odd Thomas, in his Odd Series lost his girlfriend to mass murderers in the first book and never looked twice at another woman despite only being in his early twenties.

Lack of Emotion

Stuart Woods writes a series about a police woman called Holly Barker. In Orchid Blues, her fiancée is murdered and he merely gives a brief account of her feelings. She immediately returns to the job and is relegated to a secondary character in her own series. I managed to get half through Reckless Abandon, which had even less emotional depth to the characters. He obviously doesn’t care for government agencies and their employees, yet his so-called good guys also came across as dishonest or dumb.

A lack of emotion doesn’t characterize the work of David Baldacci or Brad Meltzer. It’s more that romantic interests take a back seat to the coworker/friendship relationships with men. The Collectors is one of Baldacci’s Camel Club novels. Though it stands alone fine, one of the main conflicts is left hanging, obviously to be taken up in the next book. Both series are set in Washington D.C., the characters involved in conspiracies by or against government officials. Baldacci’s group of men first came together socially. Meltzer’s group specifically works in political circles. Baldacci’s main character is the more prevalent stiff-upper-lip loner. Meltzer takes more pains to round out his character’s emotional life.

Violence

I’ve read the first three books of George R. R. Martin’s Ice and Fire Series. Storm of Swords, the third book, depressed me. The characters endured horrendous things (betrayals, murder, illness, and sever injury), seldom relieved by anything positive. I prefer stories that balance the negative and positive in a believable way. Some of his married couples did at first experience loving and loyal relationships but ended violently. Most of the sexual encounters are violent or primarily described in physical terms. 

David Anthony Durham’s second book, The Other Lands, of his fantasy trilogy, is also very violent and full of betrayal and intrigue. A few of the couples love each other, but sex tends to be a weapon or strategy. Side note: the fantastic creatures in both these writer’s novels remind me of video game monsters that flout the laws of physics. The Other Lands did have a flying lizard that becomes more of a character than a caricature.

On the Other Hand

We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas tells the story of a wife and son coping with their husband/father’s Alzheimer’s. I read it a while ago and it has stuck with me where most stories don’t. Highly poignant and written in a real-life style, the emotions of confusion and loss wring the heart, but the sex life of the husband and wife still comes across as from a man’s point of view, despite being described from the wife’s perspective, with an emphasis on the physical rather than the emotional aspects.