Rimango sempre più stupita non solo dalla profondità, semplicità e verità delle parole di queste autrici, ma anche dal loro essere alla mano e disponibili. Elizabeth Hoyt risponde a un mio commento sulla scena da lei messa (che riguarda un carciofo...in apparenza!), tutte le scrittrici echeggiano il commento che viene lasciato dalle lettrici anche solo con un "grazie mille", la creatrice del sito si scusa direttamente con me perché molti contest non sono aperti internazionalmente...Pamela Morsi risponde dopo appena 6 ore al mio commento alle sue parole pubblicato in goodreads, e via dicendo. E poi, queste autrici che raccontano, come se fosse normale, di periodi di miseria, di difficoltà, di lutti e di problemi psicologici, di aver cambiato venti lavori in dieci anni, senza perdere il sorriso e la forza interiore.
Niente di più lontano dalla gran parte degli autori e delle autrici italiane: autocompiaciuti, sdegnosi, pieni di vanità e desiderosi di rimarcare la loro differenza dalla "gente comune". Non so perché avviene, o se è solo una mia impressione, magari sbagliata. Comunque in questi giorni mi sembra di vivere e capire appieno il modo di dire "ha trovato l'America", o quando si dice "è un altro mondo". So che non è tutto oro quello che luccica, ma devo ammettere che anche questo sta smontando molti dei miei pregiudizi sugli Stati Uniti.
Romance, more than any other genre, goes
directly to the heart of the matter and declares that happiness is not only
possible, but achievable in the here and now.
And it does so by taking the hero and
the heroine on a journey of transformation. There will be pain, there
will be setbacks, there will be pasts that seem too terrible to escape and
flaws that seem too ingrained to overcome. But at some point, in the
hands of a great author, these characters rise from the ashes of their fear and
their mistakes. They now understand what it means to make good choices;
and they do make those good choices, even if—heck, particularly if—it is the
toughest thing they’ve ever done.
It is the
most life-affirming message one could find anywhere. And that’s why
romance matters.
Sherry Thomas
Romance gives
us hope no matter how dark the day. It offers refuge when we are weary but most
of all it never fails us because a true romance has a satisfying ending. And
like all great romance novels, one day my story will end and I know in my
heart, whether in the flesh or in the spirit, the man I love will be there
beside me, reaching for my hand.
Debra Webb
Romances celebrate hope.
They are about the hope of the
characters finding their way through trials and tribulations to their very own
happily ever after. They affirm the importance and the value of the pair bond,
the committed couple, and that value always stretches beyond the hero and the
heroine, imbuing their community, their families, their friends, and their own
lives with joy, happiness, and hope.
Romance
matters because it gives us all hope that we, too, just like the heroes and the
heroines of our favorite novels, will prevail in spite of troubles and turmoil;
that we will strive to become a better version of ourselves; and that we will
find our own happily ever after. Romance holds out hope for a better, happier,
more loving future.
I read romance
because I believe there is more to humanity than eating and sleeping and work.
There is the spirit and the imagination and they must be fed in order
that they not whither and die. There is adventure and humor and love and
when I read romance books I remember the best there is of life and people and I
close the book with a smile on my face and joy in my heart.
Romance matters because there’s enough heartbreak in this life and when your own heart is aching, there’s nothing more uplifting than to read about hearts being healed by the power of love.
While many people believe that the heart of a romance novel is an extraordinary love story, I also believe that the heart of a good romantic story is hope. Readers are often moved and even changed by reading romance novels. Something in the story resonates with what’s happening in their life, or what they want to be happening in their life. The love story gives them hope that they, too, can have that magical, wonderful, amazing story, that it doesn’t just exist on paper but also quite possibly in their own lives. (…) Readers of romance novels find joy, fun, adventure, thrills, and transformation within the pages of our books, and without romance novels, the world would be a little darker and heavier.
Barbara Freethy
Romance readers and writers are accustomed to the cliché of critics deriding romance novels for having Happily Ever After endings. That strikes me as strange on many levels.
For starters, I’ve never understood the
belief that unhappiness is real and happiness isn’t.
A high school English teacher assigned
us to each write a poem about the life story of someone we knew — our class’s
version of the Spoon River Anthology. I wrote the story of someone who’d had a
good life. The teacher was outraged because “It wasn’t realistic” and
threatened a poor grade. I said it was based on my mother’s life, and was
factual. Teacher-parent-principal conference ensued. Mom confirmed my
statement. Teacher still maintained it was not realistic. Mom getting
irate. Mom triumphed … I wanted to write another verse about that. Mom vetoed
that literary endeavor.
But even putting aside the question of
whether happy endings are realistic, romance novels aren’t about endings at all
– they’re about beginnings. (…) By the end of a romance, the struggles, the
joys, the self-discoveries in the story bring the characters to the beginning
of a better life than they had before. It’s brought them not to an end, but to their
beginning…
Their Happy
Beginning.
Romance novels remind me of a quote from Auntie Mame – the world is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.
As long as there are romance novels it
means that’s there’s always a safe place to go to, no matter how tough reality
is. There’s always an afternoon or evening that can belong just to us, and no
amount of criticism or demands can take away from them.
I may be
lucky enough never to have had cancer, but they’ve sure saved my life a number
of times. They can save yours too.
Anne Stuart
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento