On Sunday night, there was a shooting at a park near my house. I learned about it when my sister sent me a text message: “Are you home? Did you see the news?” I think she was asking if I was safe.
Around 7:30pm, a man, allegedly upset after a fight with his girlfriend, took two handguns to the park and opened fire randomly into the crowd, killing three people, critically injuring a fourth, before killing himself. I felt sick to my stomach when I read the news. This was the park where I took my best friend’s children to play (my niece and nephew in love if not by blood). It’s a popular spot in my community because of its large, well-kept playground, and a pedestrian bridge that crosses a narrow section of lake. It was a warm night and my husband and I would have gone walking except he had to go into work for a few hours. We might have gone walking in our neighborhood–we might have gone walking there.
The next day the rest of the news hit my community as the names of the victims were released. One of the victims was an eleven year old girl; her father was also killed. Her mother was the person listed in critical condition at our local hospital. According to witnesses, she was shot while trying to protect her two other children, both of whom escaped unharmed. The final victim was a man from my hometown who is the same age as me.
I started crying as I listened to the press conference. I’m not a crier as a rule, but this news–the idea that an entire family had been victimized while enjoying a community park on a spring night–was almost too horrifying to contemplate. I know that park and I know that it’s always full of joggers and cyclists and families. I thought about the time I had spent there with my niece and nephew, prepared for what were in my mind the worst-case scenarios: scraped knees, sunburns, ticks. I had felt safe there, and that feeling of safety was taken away from me and my community. I have a boiling mixture of feelings inside me today–anger and grief and bewilderment–but more than anything I feel violated.
Even as removed as I was from the event–I had not been there and didn’t know the victims–I felt deeply troubled and anxious because it. My brain was spinning trying to understand something that can’t be understood. How can a person take the life of three strangers? A child? Was I as safe as I had always presumed to be in my community? It was a depression and anxiety typhoon.
I needed self care.
Immediately after learning about the victims, being given a face and an identity to put on what was until then just a rough idea of “someone,” I had to distance myself. I shut off my TV, and left the car radio off and avoiding social media and the news. I sequestered myself away from coworkers who wanted to discuss what happened. I shut off my phone and went somewhere quiet to read.
I started reading Nora Roberts’ A Dance Upon the Air. I’ve just discovered Nora, and she couldn’t have come into my life at a better time. I needed a romance novel desperately. I needed to give my brain the space to heal.
One of the reasons that the romance genre is so often denigrated and sneered by the literary mainstream is that romance novels come with a guaranteed happy ending. Happily Ever After is a sacred cow of the romance genre–almost any boundary can be pushed except that. Leave romance readers with a tentative and unstable Happy For Now and you’ll watch them rage on Goodreads and Twitter. Romance readers want closure.
The idea that a book must be tragic or ambiguous to be good as is ridiculous to me as the assertion that romance readers are somehow stupid or emotionally immature for requiring that HEA to be satisfied. The beauty of the story isn’t in the ending, but rather the journey, and knowing that the ending will be happy allows romance readers to accept more angst and pain throughout that journey. We hurt with and for our characters because we are assured that everything will be okay in the end.
Ironically I found this comfort in the first Nora book I read this week, The Liar, which is heavily dosed with suspense and a little violence. Even in the context of romantic suspense, which can be incredibly violent, there is sanctuary in the ending. The serial killers that plague romantic suspense aren’t spree killers–there is a pathology to what they do, a key allowing the hero and heroine to unlock their motives and triumph over them. There is a sense to their violence that there so often isn’t in the real world. There is closure.
I think that by promising us closure, a positive end to our emotional upheaval, romance novels give us the space to heal. By giving our brains the ability to make sense of the world, to tie it up in a nice little bow of resolution, they grant us a sense of serenity and finality that we’re missing in our real lives. I couldn’t cope with the senselessness of what happened to my community this week–I certainly didn’t want to parse through tragedy or ambiguity in my fiction. I wanted to know that if my characters hurt, they would heal. I wanted to know that the monsters would be caught. I wanted to be affirmed that we all deserve love, each and every one of us.
The beauty and strength of the romance community is this message, that in the end it’s all about love and it’s ability to change lives. It sounds trite, but it’s powerful.
Thank you, Nora Roberts, for sitting with me through this. Thank you to Eloisa James and Edith Layton, to the Bronte sisters, Austen, Sandra Brown, Tiffany Reisz, Maisey Yates, Victoria Dahl, Julia Quinn and Lisa Kleypas, and many many writers who’ve silently been with me when I’ve been hurting. Thank you to the indie authors and the Harlequin authors and the mystery writers, who have seen me through illness and grief and loss.
My niece and nephew are coming over for dinner so their parents can celebrate their anniversary. They will probably want to play outside–maybe go to the park. They are too young to understand what happened. I’m going to take them back, but not tonight. I’m still too scared and angry.
Instead we’ll read outside. We have Junie B Jones and the Wayside School to make us laugh, and after they leave I’ll find my comfort in romance, knowing that I’m promised a safe space to heal, and a happy ending.
Books—and especially romance novels—are absolutely my coping mechanism. But unless I’m in the middle of an absorbing new story when the shit hits the fan, I usually reach for my comfort reads. Old, trusted friends, those books. (I have a GR shelf for them because digital shelving is more difficult to cope with when in shock. And most of my print library is packed away in boxes.) Series are good, I just read one after the other without having to make decisions about my next read. Or author-specific binges.
Many hugs to you and your community, Elyse.
What an utterly horrid thing to have happen! I do worry about all of you guys in the US! A post on romance novels as a safe space to escape to could not be more well timed for me. I am sitting here tonight wondering if my partner of six years is going to break up with me because I told her parents (whom she gets on very well with) that she was going through a rough patch and needed some extra support. She’s been really struggling with anxiety and panic disorder lately on top of depression, and puts so much effort into keeping up appearances with everyone but me. I’m just trying to muddle through as best I can with helping her (it’s not like there’s a manual, and though I have suffered from depression myself it doesn’t make me an expert) but may have muddled wrong, as she was distraught that I had told her parents and says I betrayed her trust and that she can never trust me again. Which was all said in a bout of hysterical crying, but. Don’t know what the morning will bring.
But at least I have a nice book to curl up with until then – Tessa Dare’s Say Yes to the Marquess, which I am loving.
I have also recently enjoyed Claudia Dain’s The Courtesan’s Daughter.
Some standby comfort reads for me are any of Georgette Heyer’s Regency books, the Lord Meren series set in Ancient Egypt, Anne Bishops Black Jewels series (like crack!), the Phryne Fisher books (and tv series) and anything by Courtney Milan.
@Lucylegs:
I’m so sorry you’re in that situation. It is so hard to know how to do the right thing sometimes, and you clearly want to help your partner. I hope she and you are ok today.
I consider romances one of my coping mechanisms as well. There’s nothing wrong with that and it’s a shame people sometimes try to make one feel guilty for reading “those” books.
Many condolences to your community, Elyse.
And sending Lucylegs virtual hugs. I hope things work out.
Thank you, Elyse, for putting this idea of sanctuary into words. Last year, my best friend’s father passed away one day and my uncle passed the next. Both were only in their 50’s and their deaths were unexpected and sudden. The loss of two men I cared for deeply along with the tragedy of both deaths shut me down. Depression I hadn’t dealt with in years came surging back. My friends and spouse were incredibly supportive but I don’t know if I would have been able to come out of it so well if not for the ability to take sanctuary in books. I read so many Mary Balogh books that month and that gave me time to heal and time to appreciate the beautiful lives both men had.
Also, shortly after my best friend’s father’s funeral, I handed her a copy of Bet Me. Sanctuary should be shared.
You and your community are in my thoughts, Elyse.
This hits so hard on something I think about a lot. We all have our comfort reads — mine is just about anything by Kleypas — but they thought of WHY they’re comfort reads is something else. It has always frosted my fritters that books aren’t “literature” unless they have a tragic/deep ending.
And Elyse, “By promising us closure, a positive end to our emotional upheaval, romance novels give us the space to heal. By giving our brains the ability to make sense of the world, to tie it up in a nice little bow of resolution, they grant us a sense of serenity and finality that we’re missing in our real lives.” is getting put on the bulletin board over my desk. I’m not a person with cutesy sayings all around her house, but once in a rare while something resonates.
I hang out on a discussion board for writers, and every so often someone will ask, “Why can’t we publish romances with sad endings?”
All sorts of reasons are put forward in favor of woe-mance. The traditional HEA is boring, old, a tired trope. An ending where the hero dies can still affirm the couple’s love (like the movie Ghost). The writer finds it more deep and satisfying and meaningful to end with tragedy. Romance, unlike any other genre, is constrained by this insistence that the story HAS to end a particular way.
I’ve even seen “If the couple are in love for 299 pages, and on page 300 she gets hit by a truck, why does that one event invalidate the previous 299 pages of romance?”
At times it makes me want to tear my hair out. The only reason I enter the debate is because I never want a tragedy to be labeled a romance and for readers to buy that when they’re expecting a romance. Even then, someone replied that the worst thing that would happen would be a reader disliking the book, so what.
No, I said, it would be a reader feeling they’d been deliberately lied to either by the author or publisher. That’s not a reader who’ll pick up anything else with your name on it.
And as Elyse’s article shows (an article I just linked to on the most recent romance-should-be-open-to-tragic-endings thread), it could also mean a reader wanting a specific comfort from a book but being given a kick in the teeth instead. I don’t want that to happen to anyone. Thank you for expressing this so well, Elyse, and I hope the best for your community’s healing.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the idea of “sanctuary.” For me, writing and reading romance has always been my comfort, my release. I could read about dismal stories. I could even insert some sadness into my romance, but for me, ultimately I need that happy ending. I need light at the end of the tunnel because life doesn’t always provide it.
Great post. Thanks for sharing.
Romance novels have carried me through so much trauma and heartache, and you’re right; the fact that a happy ending is coming is so comforting. I’m sorry that happened to you and your community.
I know a lot of people pan Nora, but I know that the ride will be good, the romance will be entertaining, and the ending will be just what I need when I am looking for that escape. She’s a go-to read and an auto-buy for those and many more reasons.
I am in the midst of some health problems and realized the two books I was reading – one a nonfictional WWII account, the other a romantic suspense – weren’t cutting it for me so I looked on my Kindle for the first book that appealed to me which was Julie James’ It Happened One Wedding. Read that through (3rd time reading) before I could return to the other book. I hadn’t realized it had become one of my comfort reads. Nora Roberts’ Chesapeake Series are a go-to for me as well.
My thoughts and prayers are with your community as you deal with this situation. How horrible.
@Elyse: Let me add to the hugs for you and your community. And condolences to the families of those lost. 🙁
Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters has been a big comfort read for me all my life, and since I discovered her work pretty early on, she’s definitely my origin point for my partiality to Gothics. Also my partiality to Susanna Kearsley.
And yeah, Ms. Roberts represents prominently on my shelves, both virtual and physical.
Elsye, thank you for articulating so well something I’ve thought for years.
I originally read romances in high school, but broke away for science fiction and fantasy after that. I got back into the genre when my mother was dying from cancer and my sister gave me Inner Harbor by Nora to get me through.
In a world that seems to be more and more chaotic, violent, and/or mean, I’ve come to need the comfort and closure books with a HEA give me. You’re right, they’re my sanctuary.
I loved this piece and really identified with it. Romance novels have always been my escape from a harsh world. I’m a journalist and I write those terrible news stories. Sometime last year, between covering a tragic trial and a mass shooting, I decided to write my own romance story just so I could write something that ended well. It was incredibly cathartic.
This piece is spot on for me too! A few weeks ago it came out that my father in law has been having an extended affair. My mother in law has some serious mental health issues so now we’re all worried for her because it’s pushing her to the edge, and the whole thing is immensely stressful on my partner and the whole family. I feel like all I want to do is hide away and read a HEA to reassure myself that there is still love in the world. (I wish I could come up with the perfect comfort read for my husband, sigh.)
Comfort reading can be so, so powerful!
I am so sorry that such violence hit your community. I am glad that you turned off your tv and social media. It is so important to take care of yourself emotionally. We can only handle so much grief and fear and sometimes watching the news is like ripping off scabs as they heal.
I only started reading romance two years ago and I am so glad I started. I was firmly in the science fiction/fantasy genre and while I loved books with heavy romantic storylines I always looked down on the romance genre (I was so so ignorant!). Thankfully reading Ilona Andrews and Patricia Briggs led me to Nalini Singh (whom I now worship-omg she is amazing) and my eyes were opened to this world. It is so comforting to know that I can pick up a romance novel and know that the ending will be happy. I get very emotionally caught up in novels and I like knowing what I am getting myself into. I still love reading fantasy novels but I am always worried that the author is going to carve out my heart. I am graduating grad school on Friday and romance novels have helped me combat the stress and anxiety.
Continue to take care of yourself and know that our thoughts are with you <3
Hugs and prayers to you and your community, Elyse.
I also identified with your (eloquently put) thoughts. When my mom was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, I switched to reading romance novels pretty much exclusively.
The funny thing is, it wasn’t really a conscious effort on my part. I’ve just always been a voracious reader, and whenever I grabbed something new to read, I inevitably wanted something “happy.” (It took me a few months to realize what I was doing.)
My mom’s better now, but I still read a lot more romance than I used to. (There’s enough sadness in the world that I often feel like reading something that will make me smile.)
This post resonates me with very deeply. I lost my father in 2013 and for a while when I was busy with the funeral arrangements I thought I may not be able to read romances anymore since it would have lost its genuinity for Me. Maybe my grief would make me see those romances as sugar coated fluff. But once all the arrangements were done and over with, I was consuming romances more than ever. It felt wonderful to just be lost in a world where there’s happiness when my world was bleak and weary. My father passed away from a sudden brain haemorrhage attack which led him to coma which led to heart attacks. We weren’t able to get him medical help fast enough and this thought always stuck with me, maybe if I had been there with him etc etc. But then I read Sarah Mayberry’s Her Kind of Trouble. MILD SPOILER AHEAD. One of the side characters gets into an accident which leads to haemorrhage. At this point I thought I’ll have to keep down the book cause I didn’t know if I could deal with this person being alive and fit and fine. That didn’t happen and it was actually the way Mayberry dealt with the issue that made me come to some of the realities regarding my father’s situation. So yes, romance is an escape, very much but with the way the genre is heading it’s also very very real. Something like, shit does happen but happy ever afters are still possible
I agree with everyone who has commented. Another layer to this choice of reading Romance is that it gives you a positive outlet instead of stewing and fretting over things that you cannot control (been there, still there, done that…still doing that) romance is sanity-sustaining! I, myself am re-reading, in order, Nora as JD Robb…a brilliant choice because justice does prevail even if it doesn’t come soon enough.
I am sitting here, caring for my terminally ill mother, reading Loretta Chase’s Not Quite a Lady for the 20th time. This year has been horrible, but I’ve devoured romance after romance, almost to the point of obsession. Romance has been a relief and a refuge during possibly the worst time in my life.
Elyse, you wrote an article last June, Chronic Pain and Coping: Why Romance Novels Are My Equipment For Living, where you described, in perfect detail, what it is like to have chronic unexplained pain, and what it is like dealing with medical professionals (for years) while trying to not lose your mind. I feel your pain, both literally and figuratively. (I actually had a doctor, a rheumatology specialist, tell me that I had “Tender Lady Syndrome”! My mother happened to be with me, and saved him from being punched in the face.) Reading your words was absolutely a “Killing Me Softly” experience for me.
In that article you spoke about listening to the Blues. I had the thought that in listening to the Blues we get commiseration. It’s certainly a type of escape, one in which other people are suffering in the same way that we are, and so we are not alone. It can feel supportive in a way, and even empowering, but there are no happy endings in the Blues.
Sometimes you need to know that it can be ok, it can end well, there can be a happy ending. When you need this, literary fiction is a scary place to look for it. You need a guarantee that you’re not going to add more pain to what you’re already suffering. Outside of romance, there are no guarantees.
My last several years have been rolling migraines, very nearly constant fibromyalgia flares, surgeries, injections, sick mothers, schizophrenic brothers, and now, just for fun, I’m having panic attacks about it all.
I’m not ashamed to say that I need a happy ending. I deserve a happy ending. And because I like a little bit of the Blues mixed in with my happy ending, I’m going to read another romantic suspense.
http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2014/06/chronic-pain-and-coping-why-romance-novels-are-my-equipment-for-living/
Well said. Why is it acceptable for someone to binge watch a tv show when they’re feeling bad, but reaching for a romance novel is suspect? I picked up my first romance novel in years while on a nightmare business trip with to a trade show in Las Vegas this January, Sarah MacLean’s A Rogue by Any Other Name, and after spending all day dealing with an abusive client on the show floor, I could crawl back to my hotel room and lose myself in a warm and safe space for a few hours. Carla Kelly’s Here’s to the Ladies has also been a huge comfort read for me lately.
I thank you, Elyse, for this, at the same time I abhor the situation that inspired your eloquent writing.
Sanctuary, solace, shared grief; this is how we cope with the unimaginable. We wrap our arms and hearts around our families and friends, our hands around our books.
Sanctuary…. why I reread books…. some people just don’t get it, I want to be in that story again. I NEED to be in that story again.
Books are a great sanctuary when random acts rock your world. Almost a decade ago, a young family in my area was the victim of a home invasion and murder. Hell, I still can’t hear “100 Years” by Five for Fighting without thinking of them. I was acquainted with the wife/mother through volunteer work and the husband/father ran in the same geeky circles as me. One of my friends lived down the street from them. The story was everywhere, so I turned off the media and turned to romance novels for comfort and distraction. The happily-ever-afters gives us hope when it seems like the world is going to Hell in a handbasket. Elyse, I hope time and La Nora heals.
I have this theory that people tend to look for balance between the different aspects of their life, so it makes perfect sense to reach for sweet in your fiction when life is providing enough bitter on it’s own.
Also I’m sorry that this terrible thing happened, and I’m sorry you had to deal with it happening, and I’m glad you and yours are well.
@ SB Sarah
Thank you so much for your note, it really helped through one of the most fraught of days. Several doctors appointments, phone calls to partner’s therapist team and tearful conversations later we are doing okay. I feel like the last 24 plus hours have been a weird surrealist soap opera, or worse, one of those annoying as hell romance novels where the protagonists spend the book communicating on different wave lengths. I have now had conversations that belong in the trashiest of romance novels – I feel we may have plagiarised. And all the while part of my brain was freaking out at what is happening, and another part is calmly observing that she is not her normal self and not to worry. Weeh, emotional draining! I was lucky I had a doctor’s appt already scheduled this morning with my awesome GP who knows about mental health and is also partner’s doctor, and so was able to provide much needed perspective.
Also, for me, another thing that really helps is listening to your podcast. It is a way to motivate myself to do chores when I am feeling flat and need to do something to take my mind off things, and at the end of it I have accomplished something and been cheered up by the awesomeness that is the podcast.
So yeah, not just romance novels, but this blog and your podcast are a light in dark places.
@LucyLegs:
I’m so relieved to hear you made it through a really rough day. It sounds as if you have a wonderful support network around you, and I hope you’re ok. It’s hard when conversations require all your mental and emotional strength. I’m immensely honored that the podcast and the site help you find things that make you happy. Thank you.
I’m so sorry this happened to you, to anyone, and grieve for that poor family.
If one of my books gave you sanctuary, some peace of mind, I’m as grateful as you are.
In books. love can conquer all, good can overcome evil. We need that belief to cope with a world where it doesn’t always happen.
Elyse, this is a lovely piece and certainly captures why Romance is so important to many of us. I am so sorry for your community. Incidents like that also make me ache for the families that don’t have access to nice playgrounds and safe environments. Romance novels are now pretty much the only thing I read — I have lost/am losing loved ones and friends and I absolutely refuse to read literary stuff that doesn’t have that HEA. Having a “place to go” where the good guys do not die and do not leaved loved ones aching is an important part of my reasonably good mental health. And so much less expensive than mental health services or drugs 🙂 Thanks to all the wonderful authors who make those endings for us.
I am so saddened for you and your community. I’m trying to imagine something similar happening at the parks I take my children to, and my mind literally refuses to fully comprehend it as a possibility.
Dance Upon the Air is one of my top comfort reads. I love the trilogy, but that one in particular really connects with me for some reason. I’m glad it helped give you some much needed escapism and comfort.
[…] Romance as refuge. […]
I’m glad that romance novels were there and worked for you. Reading has always been my retreat and comfort when necessary, and romances are the best for the task. They are absorbing and enjoyable, and soothing.
Keep taking care of yourself, even when you think for any reason that you should be “over” this. It may well take longer than you think, and that is perfectly normal.
Hi Elyse,
My heart hurts for you. No matter where I lived, I would be so sorry to read this post. As someone who lives in Wisconsin, knows this area, I want to send an extra hug. Not because it makes it worse, but because we’re neighbors. I’d bring you a pie if I could.
I love your post. I’ve long used romance novels to amuse, entertain and soothe. A couple of years ago, I lost my mother to cancer. The grief took my breath until I found romances could do the same thing for a writer as a reader.
I blogged about it here, if you’re interested:
http://theardentwanderer.blogspot.com/2015/01/happy-endings.html
Thanks for sharing your story and yourself with us.