Episode 23: Alice Martin and Is Exposition Gendered?

Women everywhere have an indescribable urge to get up and go west. That would be weird if it was real; in the hands of Alice Martin, author of the novel Westward Women, it’s not only weird but an incredible conceit for a thoughtful work of literary fiction that’s among the best books we’ve read this year. We were lucky to get Alice as a guest. This was followed by some deep thoughts about exposition in fiction, such as “what is it” and “is it for girls?” Turns out it’s for everyone, but there may be some expectations about how manly men writers don’t do much of it, because it’s not masculine to tell people what you’re thinking, I guess? Westward Women is out now.   Works Cited this episode:   A New Home, Who’ll Follow? Caroline Kirkland On the Calculation of Volume, Solvej Balle Bunny, Mona Awad The Husbands, Holly Gramazio Once and Again, Rebecca Serle The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway The Orchard Keeper, Cormac McCarthy Brighton Rock, Graham Greene One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez Legends of the Fall, Jim Harrison Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov The Housemaid, Freida McFadden Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins Legends of the Fall, dir. Edward Zwick