Chicks On Lit discussion
Daughter Wife books
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My daughter mentioned that about a month ago too, she said what is the deal? It bugs us too.
Wow that is so odd. You're right that they are appealling to women readers. I'm much more likely to look at the back of a book in the bookstore that says The Heretic's Daughter than the Heretic's Child or Heretic's Son. I'll admit it!
Some of the ones i have had on my computer list pad are: The Hummingbird's Daughter by Urrea
The Alchemists daughter by Mcmahon
The Storyteller's daughter by Dokey
The Apothecary's daughter by Klassen
The Centurion's wife by Bunn
The Vicar's Daughter by MacDonald
Galileo's Daughter by Sobel
The Burgermister's daughter by Daugh
The Zookeeper's wife by Ackerman
and
The Doctor's wife by Ozment which I actually own.
I think it is more noticable now but it has been a trend dating way back. If you do a search at a book site you can come up with tons but it goes back years. Like the Memory keepers wife has been out for 4 years already I think.
Interesting. I don't think I consciously noticed it before. It kinda feels like a cop-out. You write this beautiful, disturbing, engrossing, etc story and then the title is "The ...'s Daughter"? I love it when title gives you a hint, or advances the story, or is like an inside joke (like The Poinsonwood Bible). I assume authors chose their own titles, or does someone else get to do it?
yes, i have contemplated it before. it may indeed be a ploy to attract more female readers, using a sense of commonality or "sisterhood". but it does seem to make the daughter/wife secondary to the heretic/pilot/memory-keeper, etc., as if her identity is in being that something to someone else. okay, tera... now you have me thinking too much about it, too! lol
Fun discussion! Authors do choose titles but a publisher can also make recommendations so a book finds the right audience and doesn't confuse the shopper. It's all part of the overall editorial process. Women are a big buying group and although it might make one feel manipulated I do buy books by their cover and/or their title all of the time. I'm somewhat of an instinctual buyer and quickly make up my mind within the first few minutes of looking at a book.
generally, what some might feel is manipulation, doesn't bug me. Lot's of times authors have working titles that just don't work anymore once the book is done. I imagine there are some really interesting stories of how a book ended up with a title.....but whatever helps bring an audience to a good book
is okay with me.
Here are some more:The Gravedigger's Daughter
The Optimist's Daughter
I've also noticed how many books have "America" or "American" in the title--those are often positioned as "serious" novels that are prize-winning material but not always. No matter, the word "America" or "American" is intended, I think, to give us a sense that the book is sweeping, vast, important...etc. and also to suggest/comment on the idea of the Great American Novel.This is not a new phenonmenon; it's one that has swept over the 20th century and continues into the 21st:
The Quiet American
Graham Greene
The Un-Americans
Bessie Alvah
The Ugly American
William J. Lederer
America, America
Eli Kazan
An American Dream
Norman Mailer
Trout Fishing in America
Richard Brautigan
Americana
Don DeLillo
An American Girl
Patricia Dizenzo
Birds of America
Mary McCarthy
American Family
Faith Baldwin
The Great American Novel
Philip Roth (Funny how he's commenting on this trend in his title!)
Roots: The Saga of an American Family
Alex Haley
American Gigolo
Timothy Harris
Made in America
Peter Maas
Coming to America
Linda Perrin
The Ghosts of America
William Stevenson
Lost in America
Isaac Bashevis Singer
The Americans
Jeanne Vronskaya
American Beauty
C.J. Hribal
American Dad
Tama Janowicz
American Blood
John Nichols
American Appetites
Joyce Carol Oates, 1989
An American Love Story
Rona Jaffe
American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis
Typical American
Gish Jen
Hunger in America
David Cates
Escape from America
Wallace Henley
Good Evening Mr. And Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea
Richard Bausch
American Heaven
Maxine Chernoff
Purple America
Rick Moody
American Pastoral
Philip Roth
An American Killing
Mary-Ann Tyrone Smith
American Owned Love
Robert Boswell
American Captain
Edison Marshall
American Knees
Shawn Wong
American Skin
Don De Grazia
American Mystic
Michael Gurien
American by Blood
Andrew Huebner
In America
Susan Sontag
Little America
Henry Bromell
American Gods
Neil Gaiman
American Son
Brian Roley
Good topic! Lately, I've been noticing that there is an abundance of books with the word "Confessions" in the title - Confessions of a Shopaholic, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, The Confessions of Max Tivoli. That's definitely marketing at work - making the reader anticipate a story full of juicy secrets. And yes, it frequently works on me. :)
Wow - lots of America's Kate. Again the use of a same word doesn't bother me at all. i think there is an entire art to how to create a "Good Title".Some books just percolate with the obvious choice and others....it's a crap shoot to find 3 words or one word that can crown the book and be a good indicator of what is inside the cover.
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
The Bonesetter's Daughter
Mozart's Daughter
The Heretic's Daughter
The Time Traveller's Wife
The Pilot's Wife
American Wife
I've never noticed trends like that before but it seems every other title I look at has one of those two words in it. And now suddenly I feel like they are trying to lure women readers in by using key words like that. Kinda bugs me now that I think about it too hard.