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Woman's World: A Novel
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List Price: $25.00
Special Price: $16.50
Your Savings: $ 8.50 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Counterpoint
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781593761837
ISBN: 159376183X
Label: Counterpoint
Manufacturer: Counterpoint
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 450
Publication Date: 2008-01-28
Publisher: Counterpoint
Studio: Counterpoint
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Editorial Reviews:
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Norma Fontaine lives in a world of handy tips and sensible advice. Whether it's choosing the right girdle or honing her feminine allure, she measures life by the standards set in women’s magazines. But Norma discovers that the real world is less delightful — and more sinister — than portrayed in the glossies. When dark secrets threaten her brother’s blossoming romance, Norma must decide whether to sacrifice life in a woman's world for the sake of her brother’s happiness. As her decision is slowly revealed, readers realize that, like life in the magazines, Norma isn’t quite what she seems. Painstakingly assembled from 40,000 fragments of text snipped from women’s magazines, this strange and wonderful tale moves at the breakneck pace of a pulp thriller. A stunning visual tour de force, Woman’s World is also a powerful reflection on society’s definition of what it means to be a woman.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Cunning Stunt
Comment: In Graham Rawle's Oulipean fantasy, set in suburban England circa 1960. Stirling Moss, Cliff Richard, Diana Dors, and Sylvia Sims are the presiding spirits of the women's magazines ("Woman," "Woman's Own," "Woman's World") devoured by Rawle's narrator. Rawle, a well known collagist based in the UK, has cut and pasted every word of his novel from old issues of these journals, and their mawkish sentimentality, banal patriotics, and twee grooming tips have been purposely allowed to soak through into the plot, like Chanel #5 used as Drano.
"Norma Fontaine," lives in a dream of "the latest fashions, beauty tips, and handy hints for the home." Eve, an attractive, good-humored girl whom Norma's alter ego Roy meets in a cafe, kindles his romantic interests; he begins to imagine a future together with her, but "Norma" keeps rearing her unruly head especially when Roy is brought face to face with lovely ladies' clothing.
A photographer, Mr. Hands, photographs Norma. "He strutted, with rather apart legs, like a robin in a shrunk red cardigan." (104) When she calls at Hands' seedy flat, he attempts an indecent act that dismays Norma, who attacks him with her red shoe and leaves him for dead. As in every James Cain or Cornell Woolrich novel, her crime haunts her and ruins all her human relations.
Rawle is clever, and knows he's working over hackneyed ground, like a British version of Charles Busch, sending up the late 50s melodramas of multiple personality (Psycho, The Search for Bridey Murphy, The Three Faces of Eve). The basic plot of the bloke tormented by his own need to cross-dress was trite when producer William Castle used it as the basis for his Psycho rip-off Homicidal (1961). Yet Rawle can write, and has a knack for the unexpected metaphor that illuminates the central situation. Roy "nodded encouragingly, though his concentration had drifted out to sea in a small dinghy." Sometimes his metaphors come too fast and furious, like Mary's mind, "like a rapier in the hands of a frenzied swashbuckler."
Author's note says that it took two years to cut out and assemble, with scissors and glue, the 40,000 fragments he used to create the novel. While this is a staggering figure, the book doesn't give you the gasps of amazement it might, for it looks like the sort of thing that, literary quality aside, a talented middle schooler could do with Photo Shop nowadays. Its length wears you out before you're a quarter of the way done.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Real 1960's Woman
Comment: I found this book when I heard about Graham Rawle's re-illustrated Wizard of Oz. I couldn't get the technical concept of Woman's World out of my head. How long did it take to clip all those magazines? How did Rawle choose the character names?
Then I read the book and forgot all these questions. Roy and his delusional sister are believable and sympathetic. Eve, Roy's love interest, is kind without having a flat personality.
The detective noir themes could have been pushed a little harder, however. There are plenty of dark twists within the story, but little mystery until the ambiguous ending. It's a fun ride, anyway, with a narrator easily distracted by stains, soaps, modeling, and "women's work."
Perhaps the narrative's biggest triumph is its journey through the facade of popular 1960's femininity. The vibrant and flawed "Norma Fontaine" is the image of womanhood that Roy has found in women's magazines. Like this narrative, Norma is made with scraps and pieces of a commercial, frilly world that doesn't exist. The character is convincing and intriguing, though, just like this story.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Totally unique work of art
Comment: This book is totally unique. Written in the style of a ransom note using words and phrases snipped from 1950s women's magazines, every page is a beautiful work of art. It's also a wonderful story: a clever, funny, sad and very moving tale about a 'woman' whose entire life is shaped by the magazine articles she dotes on. The text is surprisingly easy to read and the reading experience offers the added bonus of a visual treat. My favorite book in ages. Buy it!
Customer Rating:
Summary: More than just reading
Comment: When I was a child I loved to climb into the window seat behind my grandmother's sofa, draw the curtains so I was hidden from anyone who came into the room, and spend hours poring over the stack of 1960s Home Beautiful and Women's Weekly magazines that resided there. The brittle, yellowing pages held such a visual fascination, with their improbable promises of domestic perfection, and this book transported me right back there.
I worried that the cut-and-paste style would prove distracting or that the narrative and the rhythm of the words would suffer from the limitations that Rawle imposed on himself, but I was delighted to find that, despite my reservations, the opposite occurred.
The appearance of the text -- gigantic drop capitals, strange fonts, pictures -- adds to the reading experience, as does the quirky injection of bathos or humour when Rawle quotes directly from ads for soap powder, advice columns, or romance stories.
My advice to you? As Kate Samperi would say, take your time to really taste and savour the exquisite word play and artistic presentation of this graphic novel.
Customer Rating:
Summary: impress amount of work doesn't impress
Comment: Graphic designers and collage artists will appreciate the amount of work and thoughtfulness that went into the production of this book; it is quite beautifully designed. Unfortunately, the story is almost unreadable, and all too often, it seems the designer was entranced by entire sections of "housewifery" from the original magazines and stuck these bits in unedited. In its tendency to digress, it's kinda like trying to talk to someone who went off their meds.
Confession: I could not finish it, so maybe it gets really good... I dunno. I'd rather look at the pictures.
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