Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. When I read a book for Book Club, I like to save my final review and blog post until after the Book Club meeting. Sometimes discussing the book with other book lovers can drastically change my perspective. Occasionally, I feel a warm, gooey love for a book, and then my club-mates poke holes in my favorite parts and bring my final decision down a few notches. More often, a book doesn’t click with me and the discussion at Book Club helps me see the merits of a book I would have panned otherwise. Artemis falls somewhere in the middle. Perhaps this is because my initial response was somewhere in the middle. 3 out of 5 stars.
My initial review copied from Goodreads
This was a decent book. It was a quick read, and I wanted to know what would happen next… but I’m just not in love with Andy Weir’s style. Some of the detailed scientific explanations made it drag for me. There’s also a lot of “well isn’t that convenient” stuff that took me out of the story. It’s not an unpleasant read, but I have read better books. This one has a lot of economics junk too. If you are looking for a good book about space economics, I recommend John Scalzi’s “The Collapsing Empire.” Or read both then tell me which you prefer.
One more thing… It’s been a while since I read The Martian, but this lead character felt like a female version of that one. And I struggled with both of them coming across as real jerks sometimes. That’s part of my beef with the style.
My own style is usually to give everything a glowing review. I just can’t do it this time. Artemis is alright.
Did Book Club change my mind?
This time around, my Sci Fi Book Club compatriots did not sway my opinion much one way or the other. Several other participants were on the fence about this one as well. Some loved the main character, some didn’t. A few were bigger fans of Andy Weir’s style, and I was reminded how much more other people had liked The Martian than I did. This prompted me to point out that I liked the movie of The Martian more than I liked the book. That rarely happens, right? Then one of our new attendees, (Yay! New people!) mentioned that he did feel like this book was written specifically with a movie in mind. Maybe that’s what it was about these books that didn’t work for me. I don’t think it’s just that, but maybe it contributes to my I-don’t-like-this-style feeling.
In true Book Club fashion, discussion of the impending movie sent us down a bit of a rabbit hole. I was trying to find out who will play the characters, because, as Kathy pointed out, this book was optioned as a film before it was ever written. My research led to this Newsweek article where Andy Weir discusses who he would like to play the characters. He mentions that he doesn’t have visuals of the characters when he is writing. They are “just blobs” to him. Maaaaaaybe that’s one reason that I’m not a big fan of them. I don’t write fiction, and I understand that different authors have different methods, but I would lay a hefty wager that my favorite characters are the ones that have been very detailed and alive in their author’s minds. The Vampire Lestat? Not just a blob to Anne Rice. Mr. Darcy? Not just a blob to Jane Austen. Mark Watney? Just a blob to Andy Weir. The only character he has a visual for is Rudy, the local mountie-styled police officer. He wants Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to play him. I don’t think he gave the book club this visual, because despite the comments about Rudy’s nice arms, we were all envisioning Brenden Fraser as Dudley Do-Right. Needless to say, if The Rock is in the movie, I will buy my tickets in advance. I will see the movie anyway, because I feel like this is another case where I will enjoy the movie more than the book.
Writing Women Well
Weir also mentions that people, especially women, didn’t like the main character, Jazz. He seems to take it as constructive feedback. If/when he writes another book and the SF Book Club selects it, I will give him another try. I suspect he might not return to another female lead immediately after this one was criticized, but I would be much more interested in seeing him attempt a sort of do-over than reading another Mark Watney. And according to the author of this Washington Post review Jazz is just another Mark Watney.
Thinking about, and attempting to be sympathetic to, the Andy Weirs of the world who are trying to write female characters, I decide to google “male authors who write female characters well.” Because I couldn’t think of one. I mean, dang, a lot of female authors don’t even get it right… and NO, I am not saying I could do it better. I am just making blogular observations. From a female perspective. Just one, not THE.
Anyway, despite asking for men who do it well, I had to scroll past 7 links to articles about how, no, as a matter of fact, they do not. Then I found this headline: 7 Male Writers Who Can Actually Write Female Characters. And I have never heard of 5 out of the 7 men or their books. When I attempted to think of my own, John Green did come to mind… but then my mind immediately said, “Yeah, but teenagers don’t really talk like that.” (Except, of course, my super-smart teenagers, but whatever.) And The Fault in Our Stars is phenomenal, but I don’t love all of JG’s female characters. Margo from Paper Towns? Not a fan. And it isn’t a huge leap from a book whose title is a Shakespeare quote to the Big S himself. You might recall from this post that Much Ado About Nothing is one of the books that I credit with changing my life. Beatrice is, indeed, one of the best characters ever. I am thrilled to see she made the list and that the author of the article feels it is sufficient to say: “She knows what’s up.” Because everyone should have already read this one and know what that means. Or at the very least watch the movie, y’all. And another thing… Beatrice? Not just a blob to Shakespeare!
Did you read Artemis? Did you like it? Or The Martian? Did you like the movie better than the book? Do you have examples of male authors who have written female characters well?
This is the guy I was thinking of:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/5TUAAOSwxndXT2yK/s-l300.jpg
Since I gloss over physical descriptions and rarely have a mental image of characters myself, except for basics like “she’s middle eastern, duh”, or, if I do, I have a completely different mental image than the description anyway, I do not mind that he doesn’t have a mental image of them either. There are sometimes characteristics that are important to the characterization, like Rudy’s muscles, that I’ll pay attention to. I guess that’s just part of Weir’s style that appeals to me and not to others. I am actually annoyed by descriptions that are too specific. That takes me out of the narrative.
My kid said the same thing. “I like to imagine the characters myself.” And I’m okay without detailed descriptions, but I still feel like the author should have a vivid mental picture, regardless of how much of it they share with us.
I like my character to have established looks. I don’t need the same description used over and over again. The character is a person that a writer creates it seems lazy to not know what your characters look like. That is my opinion at least.