Reviews for Woman

The average rating for Woman based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-01-04 00:00:00 Alain Fournes I guess after you've been writing for half a century or so, you no longer need to "pay your dues," and can just start submitting your first drafts for publishing. Except that this book isn't really a first draft'it's more of a half-draft. But we'll get to that in a minute. I like everything of Matheson's that I've read. I was in the library recently and needed to get a book that was relatively short, 'cause I just wanted something to tide me over while an Amazon order of Zelazny books makes its way to my house. I came across Woman, a book I'd never even heard of before. It was by Matheson and it was short (125 pages), so it seemed like a good deal. As I was saying earlier, this seems like a "half-draft," in that it's not even as polished as a first draft would be. The typos and grammatical errors are just'yikes. They're everywhere. It's not just a small mistake here or there. I wouldn't be surprised if the book averages more than one error per page. But that's something we can get past if the story is good, right? Actually, yes. I found myself drawn into this book more than anything else I've read lately, and I think it's just because Matheson knows how to tell a story. The premise wasn't something that sounded very interesting to me and there were errors everywhere, yet I found myself flying through the pages. I didn't necessarily have any particular love for any of the characters, but apparently I was interested in what was going on, because I got through this thing in no time. According to the Wiki gods, Matheson was about 79 when this was published, and it reads very much like an old guy who doesn't really give a crap about quality anymore and just wants to get his message out. The first half of the book or so is just a debate about the female movement in society, and the amount of errors makes me wonder if Matheson even read over anything he wrote or if he just went straight ahead without ever looking back. In addition to the mistakes, there were also a few style choices I didn't like (and these were things I hadn't noticed in Matheson's writing before, but maybe I just haven't read enough of his stuff). For starters, there's the italics. I'm not sure there was ever a character who spoke in this book without having at least one of their words italicized. Early on, this made it sound like everyone was just talking so hard, and it was extremely difficult to read. But, as is always the case when you overuse something like this, the reader eventually becomes desensitized to it. By the end of the book, I was just ignoring the italics. Which, of course, could mean I wasn't reading some of the lines in the way Matheson intended'but he cried wolf so often that I stopped listening, so I probably didn't hear it when it really counted. Another thing that got me was that Matheson felt the need to put a dialogue tag right after someone got interrupted. For example, he might say something like . . . *** "But I'" he started. "Oh, shove it," she interrupted." *** The problem? It's supposed to be an interruption, and by putting the "he started" dialogue tag in there, you're putting space between the first line of dialogue and the second. We don't want space there. We don't want a pause there. A pause makes it sound less like a smooth-flowing interruption. Why is the "he started" even necessary? We know he started talking. Between the quotation marks and the em dash, we already know that he started talking and was then cut off. That's what the em dash was for. It's doing all the heavy lifting here, and rightfully so. Let the em dash do its job, Richard. My last major style complaint is that Matheson seemed to really over-explain his dialogue. There were lots of adverbs on the dialogue tags and little notes to tell us just how the person said the thing they said. We do NOT need to be updated that often on how they're speaking'if you tell us once to set the mood of a conversation, we can figure it out from there. Or, hell'most of the time, you probably don't even need to tell us once, because context clues will tell us how the person is talking. I really felt like Matheson was beating me over the head with information I already had. Anyway, as far as the story goes, I saw a review here that mentioned that the plot doesn't really get underway until partway through the book, and I'd agree with that. But apparently I felt that the earlier parts of the book were interesting enough, because the pages just kept turnin'. And the ending was pretty cool, so that's nice. All in all, this is dangerously close to being a 2-star book, on account of all the typos and poor style choices. But I can't deny the facts: Matheson held my attention the entire time, and the last few books I've read haven't really been doing that. So 3 stars it is.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-05-18 00:00:00 David Villa This is an odd book. It starts off looking like one thing'I was reminded of, of all things, the TV play Abigail's Party'and then seems to be heading in a completely different direction'an Outer Limits/Tales of the Unexpected-type scenario'before ending up as straight science fiction. I can see why people might have been disappointed in it. Those who come to it after watching I Am Legend won't know what hit them. Then again they'd probably be disappointed with the original novel rather than the other way round. The title Woman works on a couple of levels and we don't actually learn who 'Woman' is until the last few pages. Up until then I hadn't thought it was that great a title although Matheson hammers the Feminist stake into all the male chests with gusto; there isn't a man in the book that's likeable, not even the hero, although to be fair none of the women are especially likeable either. To criticise the writer for populating his book with cardboard characters is to miss the point: they are. Woman came out in 2006 but it felt very 1970s. I've watched TV programmes from or set in that time and it's quite appalling how the males behaved and what the females tolerated. If this book had come out then I can imagine it becoming a cult classic. Not now. It is one thing'from start to finish'a page turner and that's perhaps a little surprising since the bulk of the book is dialogue. Nothing really happens and virtually all the action'I use the term loosely'takes place in a single apartment. I found it hard to put down. The best part reminded me of the film Carnage where two pairs of parents hold a cordial meeting after their sons are involved in a fight, though as their time together progresses, increasingly childish behaviour throws the evening into chaos. I've been in company like that, where a conversation gets out of hand and nothing can rein the guests in. The book is not without its faults and other reviewers have highlighted them. I liked it more than I expected. It probably only deserves 3½ stars but I'm going with 4 since I got so caught up in it that I missed most of its failings and these are things a decent editor should've picked up; I can't fault the author for that especially knowing what things my own editor has caught.