Alone in the Classroom

I haven't counted heads but I have a strong impression that among talented, successful fiction writers, women outnumber men by a considerable margin - at any rate in Canada. I think it's because empathy is an important quality for a writer to possess, and women tend to have a higher quotient of empathy than men do. I'm not a slow reader, quite the reverse in fact, but I read haphazardly and without reference to best seller lists. Thus I caught up with Alone in the Classroom,  Elizabeth Hay's best seller from a few years ago, only last week. It's a story in which her empathy for her characters comes through loud and clear. I've read her previous novels, greatly enjoyed her Giller prize-winning Late Nights on Air. I think this is a better book, a complex story that extends over three or more generations and manages to present three dimensional views of several people whose lives and loves are intertwined. Good and great story-tellers must have several qualities. They must be able to tell a story: narrative skills are important. They must be able to create characters, preferably well-rounded, believable people. They must be able to develop tension, conflict, challenge and response, crisis and resolution, so readers will ask "Then what happened?" -- and will eagerly read on to find the answer.  Another quality creative writers require is empathy, the ability to see the world through another person's eyes, and to present that other perspective with credibility and compassion. In much great literature and in most good fiction, this is the most important quality of all.  It is a quality Elizabeth Hay possesses in abundance, perhaps particularly in presenting her female characters, although she does pretty well with the two most prominent men in this book too. When I finished Alone in the Classroom, I knew the free-spirited Connie, the twisted, driven Parley, dyslexic, talented philanderer Michael, and half a dozen others with whom their lives collide. I've known real people like each of them. I'm less confident that I can identify among my friendship network a real person who resembles the sometime first-person narrator Anne, perhaps because she is too self effacing. Her personality is clear enough, her appearance less so. The physical appearance, clothing styles, mannerisms, as well as the personalities of the other principal characters are sketched so convincingly I would recognize them if I saw them in my neighbourhood supermarket. Probably every reader of this blog has already read Alone in the Classroom. If there are any who haven't, try it. You'll like it.