Romance

One of the foundational facts about my life is that for three years in my early twenties, my first real publishing job was full-time proofreader of romance novels. Because the major worldwide publisher of romance novels is headquartered here in Toronto, and proofreading is where you start on the editorial hierarchy, a lot of folks around these parts in publishing had this experience and you hear various versions of it. This is the best one, in my opinion. As a grounding in publishing, it was a fabulous experience—the editing, the typesetting, the quality control was all held to a high standard and all on display for the proofreading—it was an opportunity to learn a tonne. I also greatly enjoyed the solidarity of being part of a large department of underlings, trying to do something important that no one else cared about. We had a lot of fun.

As a grounding in actual romance, it was terrible. As a woman in my early twenties trying to date men, a steady onslaught of early-aughts romance novels felt like the worst thing that could have happened to me. I had no opinion going in—I had only read one or two in my life prior to starting the job and while they were not my cup of tea, they seemed pleasant. I didn’t fully understand until I had read quite a few what romance novels—indeed what most genre fiction—actual is about. Which is not about life as it is lived, but about one aspect of life, blown up and exaggerated and usually somewhat idealized or sanitized (depends on the genre we are talking about) and also made to hew tightly to a both a Fichtean curve and a tight set of plot and content rules (again, depends on the genre, depends on the writer how tight). A true romance novel won’t have protagonists who are bad actors, or who even behave badly for more than a brief incident they are quickly sorry for. And the central couple always ends up together—often in the sense of marriage but always in some sort of permanent, committment-y type way. It’s all very gentle, and meant to be nice. And some are—nice people having nice times before having a nice wedding. In others folks fall in love while solving a crime, or going to church, or having sex, or taking care of children—the sex ones are big now, but I was always a bit partial to the crime-solvers. In the worst ones, the very old-fashioned British series—as far as I know, these are no longer published—there was some confusing (im)morality around consent. Consenting to sex is somehow presented as slutty, but boning down semi-against a girl’s will is a convenient and fun workaround? I never fully understood, but those ones were the worst.

But most of the books weren’t like that—the men were pretty respectful (mainly) and very hot if you like a lot of half-unbuttoned shirts right out in broad daylight. But oh boy, did they only ever want one thing—to find the girl, bicker affectionately with the girl, make out with the girl, perhaps solve some sort of crime (if it was that sort of series) and then Wife Her Up. The plotting was so relentless, and often the characterization so minimal that it began to feel like I couldn’t let any man flirt with me lest he begin powermarching me into a plot arc and I lose all volition—there was a sense of romance in capital Romance Novels as women falling under the sway of a benign dictator (not always so benign). Men, because of their great love and passion for these women, HAD TO HAVE THEM, immediately, locked down in holy hotty wedlock. Right away. Not a moment to be spared. It was terrifying and somewhat will-negating. Not a great way for me to to feel about men at that phase of life.

Towards the end of my tenure, the trend towards Extremely Erotic Romance was in full swing (has it ended? I don’t want to know) and the publisher I worked for was known to be more staid. Eager to get on the sexy bandwagon, some authors were pressed into service who should not have been and I have…seen some things I should not have seen. I suppose I think any type of book can be worth reading if done right but the ones I read were not done right. You take a group of young people who read about sex all day (and for while we had a night shift, so all night sometimes too) and my work team was hard to scandalize but sometimes we were scandalized. Not because the books were dirty, but because they were weird.

I worked freelance proofreading romances for another year after I formally left that job, making four years total. All told I read between 350 and 400 romance novels, give or take. The genre has enormous variety and range, in tone, in quality, and in subject, but it is not meant to be read at that rate, with that intensity, and without joy. It’s a fun genre, and it made me so sad—and often angry, and sometimes very grossed out—by the end to read about the couples falling into each other’s arms. What a shame.

I probably went a good decade after the end of that career phase without picking up single romance, nor an iota of curiosity about them. The whole 50 Shades phenomenon passed me by in a blaze of yuck and even if a romcom film got too trope-y, it was Rosenblum Out.

And then I started to get curious… The genre was evolving. Things were happening in romance that I had never seen before, and there was a period in the early aughts when I felt I knew everything there was to know about romance novels (even then, I really didn’t). Romance manga, queer romance, and yes, romantasy have come on the scene. And lots of stuff that was weird on purpose, hitting the bullseye of weirdness as opposed to missing something else and hitting weird by accident.

These days I read a romance novel every few years and…sometimes I like them, sometimes I don’t. A lot of the tropes leave me cold, but that’s sort of on me, since I’ve just seen them too many times. The queer romances are interesting to me because they at least are new to me, since we very definitely didn’t publish those when I was proofreading 20+ years ago—which just makes a girl realize that, even though time feels like a flat circle, mountains are moving. I read a couple queer romances recently, partly because I ran across them on someone’s social media and partly because Mark was away, it was very hot, and I wanted something very easy and light to absorb my brain. I read Him by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy and thought it was just fine. No one was mean or stupid, there were a few funny moments, I didn’t think the characters behaved badly. I had been worried, since both leads were hockey players, that too much page space would be devoted to describing hockey games but there was really just a soupcon of hockey—instead I felt too much page space was devoted to sex. I would say 20-25% of the book. It made it hard to develop much plot. But it was a fine enough book for a 35 degrees celsius weekend.

So I read the sequel, Us (scroll down at the link above) and it was MUCH BETTER. One of the best romances I’ve ever read. Quel surprise! Still way too much boring sex (seriously, very repetitive, the authors ran out of ways to describe every sex act they are willing to describe in book one) but it’s a real change from the romance formula otherwise. Sequels and spinoffs in romance inevitably involve the main couple’s friends, family or sometimes coworkers also falling in love, and the original couple sometimes shows up in the background, holding hands and seeming schmoopy.

Us is a different beast because it’s still about the couple from the first book, only now they are living together and trying to make the relationship work. Maybe this is a thing in romance novels now? I would love it if it is! They have a gross chair in their living room they fight about, a favourite TV show they only watch together, an annoying neighbour—you know, normal couple stuff. It’s still a silly romance in which big problems show up and are immediately whisked away but I liked it so much for the little puffs of realism every now and again.

Listen, I write realist fiction and I do it in a maximalist way—there was never a trip to the grocery store or a conversation about where the furniture polish should be kept that I didn’t think held secret character developmental relevance. You can pry the gritty daily minutiae of fictional characters’ lives out of my cold dead hands, ok? So I am a poor candidate to ever write romance, but also, I am a romantic person. In my way. I write about my love for Mark constantly, and what are all these VERBATIM TRANSCRIPTS of things he says but little love poems? We all do romance our own way.

Earlier:
MS: I’m going to the gym.
RR: Did you open your mail?
MS: I got mail? Where is it?
RR: I don’t know (waves aimlessly) Around? Kitchen? Ledge?
MS: I’ll open it when I get home.
RR: No? Now?
MS: Yes. I have to go. (starts to walk away)
RR: Can I open it? It seemed important. From the insurance company. It says “personal and confidential.”
MS: No.
RR: Really?
MS: Fine. (discovers envelope on kitchen counter, opens it) My insurance is being renewed. Ok.
RR: Huh, that’s expensive.
MS: Do you have a place for this, in your files?
RR: For YOUR insurance paperwork?
MS: Nevermind.
RR: You don’t have a file for it.
MS: I do, I do have a file for it, I was just asking.
RR: Is this the drawer that doesn’t open, you just push things through the crack, and we see them again when we move?
MS: No, no, I’ve upgraded, they go in my filing cabinet now.
RR: Oh, really?
MS: Yes, I’m doing great. I will put this in the filing cabinet.
RR: You’ll file it in the filing cabinet, like a vertical file folder?
MS: No, of course not. It’s just a pile of papers in the bottom of the drawer. But it’s a drawer that opens, so it’s progress. It’s progress!
RR: …progress towards what, exactly?
MS: What are any of us progressing towards in the end, really?
RR: …
MS: I’m going to the gym.