2017 NB: The title of this entry was changed from “Handicapped Heroines” to “Disabled Heroines” due to the fact that “handicapped” was and is an ableist term. I want to apologize for the poor choice, and apologize that I cannot change the URL to match the headline. Thank you to Brooke W. for bringing this to my attention on Twitter. – SW
It’s a little different than the “Help a Bitch Out” feature, but it’s all about looking for good things to read. Good Shit vs. Shit to Avoid is a recommendation thread devoted to books in a specific genre that feature a type of heroine, hero, plot, or locale that is often difficult to find, particularly when that feature is done right. Today, Heather, the awesome, from The Galaxy Express, is looking for disabled heroines:
When you have a chance, I’m hoping you can assist me with information about a particular type of romance heroine. I’m thinking my question might be eligible for your HaBO feature. A friend of mine and I were discussing how we’d like to read romances involving a handicapped heroine—one where the heroine gets the hero without any serious cop-outs.
By cop-outs, we mean:
1) The heroine’s handicap is resolved/healed in some way prior to her HEA.
2) The handicap becomes a non-issue based on milieu (e.g., deafness in an environment where every non-deaf human has to wear earplugs to keep the local inhabitants from piercing human ear drums with their loud calls).
3) The couple is united by a magical, psychic, biological, etc. bond they have no control over. This bond tends to ensure the hero can’t have a satisfying relationship with the vast majority of otherwise eligible women.
4) The handicap turns out to be a side-effect of great magical or psychic power that enables the heroine to save the world or the country.
SF/F would be nice, but we’re basically looking for stories regardless of sub-genre.
Oh, Heather, I hear you on the cop-outs. Love my conquer all, but there are some physical ailments it can’t overrule. What romances featuring disabled heroines do you recommend?
What an incredibly rude and condescending thing to say. You don’t find this an issue. Somebody else did. Who are you to tell others how they are allowed to feel or that their feelings are invalid?
What’s with people lately?
Lindsay,
yes that was my reaction as well.
On a personal level: I hope the gene skipped you!
Not really a romance, but Sharon Kay Penman’s When Christ and His Saints Slept features a blind heroine. (It’s actually a historical novel about the 12th century civil war between Stephen and Maude; Penman mentions in the Author’s Notes that she was so depressed by writing about real people who came to bad ends that she created a couple of wholly fictional secondary characters for the first time in that book and gave them a happy ending.)
One of Barbara Cartland’s novels features a WW2 fighter pilot hero who is blinded about 2/3 of the way through the book. He becomes severely depressed and contemplates suicide until his wife’s pregancy and a new career as a BBC writer give him a new lease on life. I don’t recall the title, but it’s quite possibly the best thing Cartland ever wrote.
“What an incredibly rude and condescending thing to say. You don’t find this an issue. Somebody else did. Who are you to tell others how they are allowed to feel or that their feelings are invalid?
What’s with people lately?”
Honey, this is a free society. People can feel and say what they want, but if I think they’re being flakey, I can say they’re being flakey. Too many people feel things and have issues with stuff where they have no idea why it bothers them. Instead, they end up dismissing something like a book, a piece of artwork, a piece of music, or a movie because it triggers something inside them. It seems to me that too many people are overly sensitive about many things these days. I’m only questioning why she would even have an issue with a Catholic theme in a book…
I never once claimed her feelings are invalid. If she feels it, she feels it, but she has to question and wonder why. It’s not a question of validity. It’s a question of why it colors her opinion of a book, and why she’s very close to dismissing the current body of work of an author. This happens again and again to writers and artists.
Is there some valid reason why I should let her opinion of a book and an author go unchallenged? Why? Because it might hurt her feelings? Really?
And, likewise, why should your comment go unchallenged? 🙂
Because I’m only questioning why you would even have an issue with someone who doesn’t want religion in her romance novels…
“And, likewise, why should your comment go unchallenged? 🙂
Because I’m only questioning why you would even have an issue with someone who doesn’t want religion in her romance novels…”
Sure, let’s go around and around. Because it could be never ending.
Deciding that Christian romance novels are not your cup of tea is one thing, but Catherine Anderson’s books are far from Christian romance. I don’t read Christian romance because, not being a Christian of any flavor at any point in my life, they do nothing for me, and I can’t really relate, but I don’t claim they are offensive to me. To that end, I don’t claim they are not good books because they are Christian romance.
Take that one step further..why would a minor Catholic theme in a romance be offensive? It’s like claiming some other book is offensive and is not a good book because one of the main characters practices Wicca. I bet we would all be up in arms if someone said that.
Do you see the double standard?
Just out of curiosity . . .
Why do you have to be condescending to make a point, Roxanne? It’s surely your right, but I’m curious, what benefit do you get from it?
@ MaryK Thanks for the name of the condition—prosopagnosia. Sadly, I didn’t have time to look it up yesterday before I posted.
IIRC, Dark Lord by Patricia Simpson has a heroine with rheumatoid arthritis. I can’t be sure, though, on that or any cop-outs since it was a DNF for me.
And I swear I just read a story with a blind female hacker in it, tracking a serial killer, but I could totally be smoking crack too. *sigh*
Do you see the double standard?
It seems to me that the double standard creeps in when one shifts from talking about what one likes or dislikes in books, and starts talking about what other posters like or dislike in books, and whether their opinions are reasonable or somehow wrong, as in being “overly sensitive.”
Books are published with the purpose of being read and evaluated by readers. Which is what happens here. Saying what you dislike in a book (such as having even a hint of religion) is part of that process. It’s useful to know that the hint is there, for any other readers who may share the same tastes.
But knowing whether commenter A thinks that commenter B is “overly sensitive” or otherwise wrong shifts the discussion from books to commenters.
“Unlike you, I found the religious themes in the book to have been applied lightly and unobtrusively” is a reply that is about the book. “You’re oversensitive about the religious themes” is about the commenter.
Interesting how that term is pandered about in disagreements. Everyone has opinions. It doesn’t mean they’re necessarily good opinions, especially those born of faulty reasoning or hipshot emotions. If my pointing that out to someone means I’m being condescending, oh well. Unreasonable opinions or faulty logic should never be embraced, or tolerated. Blame it on my philosophy background.
Not liking a book because it contains Catholic threads is not a good enough reason, for me, for someone to pan it. If you think otherwise, fine, but you better have a good counter argument to convince me otherwise.
Ursula, good points. Thank you.
Thanks for being a peacemaker Ursula.
I am as frustrated as Roxanne, though, with the many misconceptions I’ve read in the comments about Catherine Anderson’s books. I heard it best described elsewhere when someone asked if they were religious. Their religion is a part of them like blue eyes or blonde hair but the books are not preachy. I am sensitive when people are out in cyberspace with incorrect info that could lead to lost sales for authors. After all, that’s why we surf blog land: to get more recommendations, not state misinformation. If they are not your cup of tea then that’s all you need to say.
It was an Amanda Ashley novel called Embrace the Night. I think I still own a copy of that one…
There’s another Katie MacAlister novel where the heroine has oddly colored eyes, but I don’t think that counts.
In Kathryn Smith’s Be Mine Tonight, it’s implied that the heroine has some kind of cancer. She gets better thanks to her Vampire hero. Same with L.J. Smith’s Night World series. In the first book, part of the reason the hero decides to turn the heroine is because becoming a vampire will cure her of cancer.
There’s also a Susan PLnkett time travel/body switch, Remember Love, where the heroine switches bodies with the hero’s wife. In doing so, the wife goes from being “childlike” (I think they mean to say she’s mentally handicapped) to being a fully mature woman with a fully functioning brain that’s very indignant that everyone treats her like a simpleton.
Last one I can think of is a novel entitled Once in Every Life, which is another time travel/body switch. This time a deaf woman gains hearing, a husband, and a family after she “dies” and her soul goes into the body of the hero’s wife who just so happened to “dies in childbirth.
That is part of the point.
If you live within the author’s religious tradition and community, then a story set in that community will have the distinctive elements of that culture within it, as naturally as someone born in Northern Europe will take blonde hair and blue eyes as being unremarkable.
But if you aren’t part of that community, those same elements are obvious and exotic, the same as if you dropped someone with blonde hair and blue eyes into a rural village in India or Africa.
So if you are Catholic, or Christian, or raised that way, the religious aspect may seem minor to you, just background detail, while if you aren’t accustomed to that culture, it will be obvious and perhaps intrusive. And it is completely accurate to describe it as intrusive, if that is how the story works for you. The Catholic/Christian perspective isn’t any more “normal” or right than the perspective of someone who isn’t part of that culture. And someone who is disturbed by having Catholicism/Christianity treated as “normal” and neutral background isn’t “overly sensitive”, just differently sensitized.
In the category of mentally challenged heroes, Lord Dolphinton in Georgette Heyer’s Cotillion was, in today’s parlance, a fairly high-functioning autistic. Granted, Freddy was the main hero, but Dolph did find love with a nice working-class gal who could take care of him and keep him away from his awful mum.
Interesting concept Ursula & one I hadn’t thought of. I read a lot of books of all kinds. I guess looks, religion, nationality and occupations (unless central to the plot like a spy novel) are background stuff to me and do not interfere with my enjoyment of a book if I like the author & the premise.
I’m sure not everyone feels that way.
This is on-topic but not quite what the reader asked for.
John Varley’s short-story anthology “Persistence of Vision,” contains a story of the same name and it is a jaw-droppingly wonderful. It can actually make a sighted person understand how a blind community might flourish, grow and surpass those with vision. Additionally, the story has some very nice sex!
I stopped enjoying Catherine Anderson books because I thought her endings were too pat. I remember reading one, it was very compelling, it might have been the one where the heroine is deaf and she gets preggo by some cowboy she picks up in a bar or something like that- but the conflicts between her and the hero were pretty much resolved because her best friend told him the truth about what the heroine was going thru. nobody grew in that story. they just didn’t talk. too ridiculous for words, i assume??? bleh
I think there is some truth to what you say, but I also think it may be too generalized (remember, I’m not Christian, nor was I raised Christian). I think it comes down to a person’s attitude. I know I have a “will read, see, and do anything” attitude towards life. I read all kinds of stuff, some of it I absolutely love, while others I can just appreciate. There is only one thing that causes me to dislike a book: bad writing. For example, I recently was given a book that had one of the strangest plots I’ve ever seen in a vampire novel, which intrigued me, but after 3 pages of nothing but simple sentences and juvenile writing, I was done and happy to get rid of it. I don’t recommend that book to people because it’s badly written, not because of it’s plot line that has Jewish boys celebrating their bar mitzvahs by offering themselves to the neighborhood vampire (I’m not kidding).
In the case of Catherine Anderson’s newer contemporaries, panning an otherwise stand-up, well written book because one of the main characters is Catholic really just has me scratching my head and wondering wtf?
So I guess the real question I’m asking is why do people pan books for those kinds of reasons? I just don’t get it, doesn’t seem logical to me.
What I don’t get: the point of this was to give recommendations and what I’m reading is comments about books the commenters “think” they remember & plots that may or may not be accurate and saying negative things anyway. All we should be saying is this is what the book is like if that’s your cup of tea. If you’re not sure of the plot, author or book don’t say anything. If you’re going to trash a book be a “smart” bitch.
There was one story I remember I think was written by Mary Balough (that is who I have associated with it) where the heroine was deaf, and was institutionallized, and was taken out to be a ‘companion’ for one of the gentry. I remember it clearly because she becomes determined to ‘hear’ to the point of going to a quack Dr who brutally tries to ‘clear’ her ear passages. In the end she does not regain hearing.
Miles Vorkosigan is a great example, and there is an implied cultural defect that you also must take into account. He is short in a culture where men stand six feet tall, he does not top 4’10” due to his birth ‘defect’. The interactions within the society (which has a great fear of mutants) with his height alone reflects how some visible birth defects/physical differences can be a ‘disability’ simply because society forces them to be. This is not politically correct, but our society can do this.
Well, what one likes or dislikes is an emotional, not a logical reaction.
The things that can drop people out of a story can be quite odd. If the story assumes familiarity with the setting that you don’t have, it can be a problem.
For example, many people who read books in English set in or about different cultures are reading books written by people with native knowledge of English and coming from a English-speaking background. The way that a British or USAian author would write about, say, a village in India is quite different from how a native Indian, who grew up in a small village, writing for an Indian audience in an Indian language will write the same basic story. If you translate the Indian’s story faithfully, it probably won’t work for most readers in the US, because it assumes cultural knowledge that they don’t have. Metaphors will be wrong, things that need explaining won’t be explained, things that are explained may not need it, etc.
When you say:
You’ve drawn the conclusion that the book is “otherwise” stand-up and well written. And it is, for someone who thinks like you.
But for the people doing the panning, it isn’t “otherwise” stand up and well written. It is a book that has problems, and one of the problems stems from the Catholicism of the character doing things to the text that keeps it from working for them.
It may be that they find actions of the characters that are based on the character’s Catholic beliefs to be implausible, perhaps because they don’t share those beliefs, and presenting them “naturally” doesn’t give the background to understand the action if you don’t know the character’s Catholic mindset. It may be other things.
But if you start by assuming the book is “stand up and well written” for everyone, then you won’t understand the reasoning of people who don’t find it stand up and well written.
Ursula,
exactly. Thanks for articulating things so beautifully and easily understandable!
OMG—the commenters themselves mentioned the Catholic thing as being the deal breaker – nothing else.
They had better not read romance then. Sometimes the H & H get married in the end & sometimes it happens in a church.
Hardly any of the negative comments had the plot right.
Trash all you want but be accurate. No one is addressing that.
Well, in a thread like this, people aren’t commenting based on having just read a book and having it fresh in their memory. They’re commenting on what they remember about a book, without necessarily looking things up.
If the book is written in such a way that what they remember is implausible Catholic stuff and very little other detail, that’s their experience of the book.
It is quite common, when remembering a book that you didn’t like, to remember the details that stuck in your mind as bad, while not remembering much else. It’s part of the experience of reading, that different books stick with you in different ways. With a book you love, you’ll reread and remember much detail, while with a book you don’t like, you’ll remember that you didn’t like it, and a bit about why, but you won’t feel much like dwelling on it and analyzing what you disliked, unless you’re the sort of person who does in-depth literary analysis for fun.
This one sounds familiar to me, too, but I didn’t write it.
JQ
I can’t believe I forgot Mary Balogh’s Silent Melody! It’s a great book – Emily is deaf and marries Ashley – Emily is the sister of the heroine in Heartless (which is my favourite Balogh evah) and Ashley is the hero’s brother in the same book, so we get to meet both characters in that one and then they get their own story.
Emily’s deafness is part of the book and Luke (the OMG to die for hero (IMO) of Heartless) teaches her to read and write and Ashley helps her develop a type of sign language so they communicate better but there is no miracle cure or anything. It’s not just a story about Emily though – Ashley has his own journey too. And, it’s a great book, – well, I think so anyway!!
Its Fool For Love by Eloisa James (brilliant, as the rest of her books). I’ve read it only recently.
Sorry, previous comment was about the limping heroine 🙂 in reply to JQ
I’ll second the recommendation for Lui’s The Fire King. She’s a kick-ass heroine who can take care of herself, thankyouverymuch, and she does it all with only one arm. Spoiler: no, it does not magically grow back by the HEA, thank goodness. Lui is above that crap.
Um, I meant “Liu.” I misspelled it. Twice.
What. A. Moron.
Carry on.
LaVryle Spencer – The Gamble
Sandra Brown – Above and Beyond (I wanted to slap the heroine)
JR Ward – John Matthew (his book comes out April “Lover Mine”)
– Wrath (from Dark Lover on..)
I’m reading the suggestions and I’m glad that there are more out there..thx 🙂
you know what really irks me? and I’ve seen this TWICE in recently published romance: the heroine/hero is blind, but a thwack on the head cures his blindness.
I have a few blind friends and believe me, if a knock could fix their problems they wouldn’t have asked me to bean them by now. but more importantly, why can’t a person be both blind and happy in these novels? Yes, living with blindness would suck, but it shouldn’t stand in the way of true love. why do these authors make it so important that you can only be with the one you love if you can see the one you love?
This is the comment thread that will not die! I love it! I have one more:Enchanting Pleasures by Eloisa James. It’s a Regency where the hero has a horrible head injury (I think from the war, but don’t remember). He gets blinding headaches after vigorous activity, so sex with his new bride is off the table. Oh noes! While he’s not magically cured by the end of the book, he and his heroine do find…a happy ending (couldn’t resist). It’s the last in a trio of connected books, but I don’t think you have to read the first two to enjoy this one.
Ouch!
Pity that the authors and publishers of this idea can’t be sued when some fool starts going about hitting blind people thinking that it will “help.”
Am coming to this excellent discussion late, and I recognize lots of the books mentioned. Thank you, Sarah, for talking about this subject.
A contemporary romantic suspense, FIRST TO DIE by Cris Anson, has a heroine who is a BTK (below the knee) amputee. This gives her a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude when it comes to men, and there are some fiery clashes between her and the older of male twins. It’s set in the Pinelands of New Jersey. While there’s lots of sexual tension, the actual act doesn’t happen until late in the book when he finally convinces her that she’s beautiful with or without her prosthesis. Her website is http://www.crisanson.com
BTW, I especially want to second the Joanna Waugh book, BLIND FORTUNE, as a great read.
The Heroine of Mary Jo Putney’s SILK AND SHADOWS has a badly damaged leg from a childhood riding accident, and cannot walk without pain. People who want to be nasty call her a cripple. The hero encourages her to ride and to dance, both of which she was afraid to do before she met him. Its an excellent book, quite aside from her disability ( which doesn’t play all that much part in the plot).
@tshara –
Someone up there beat me to the title, however I remember this had a cop out. After he rescues her he gives her some of his blood which heals her. She grows up to become a ballerina. Then after she dies she’s reincarnated as a woman who barely remembers him – she’s all upset at their meeting because her husband and child from this life had died. Really rushed ending too. They try to find a cure, as a result other vampires attack them, so she decides instead of him becoming human, she’ll become a vampire. The end.
Teresa Medeiros’ Yours Until Dawn has the hero’s blindness cured by a thwack on the head. His blindness was caused by a wartime head injury, and the author presents it that perhaps a blood clot was messing with his eyesight and it was loosened by the second thwack. Don’t know if any of that is medically possible, but at least he wasn’t cured of a congenital or birth condition.