A novel is always a leap of the imagination but when a writer creates a first person narrator, they nearly always hesitate to do so in a gender other than their own. Can you step out of your sex to imagine what it's like on the other side?
The author Ray Robinson has done exactly that in his new novel Electricity, writing in the voice of Lily O'Connor, a straight-talking Yorkshirewoman in her thirties who's living with epilepsy and trying to piece together her chaotic family. He joins Jenni along with the writer Amanda Craig who created a male narrator in her novel In a Dark Wood, to talk about finding an authentic voice in a different gender.
Electricity by Ray Robinson, Picador, ISBN:0330444506
In a Dark Wood by Amanda Craig, Anchor Books, ISBN:038572117X
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