Literature is reflecting what is happening in life. More and more women are having relationships with younger men. It's partly that women are not losing their figures now.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period.
Far more women read fiction than men, and because of this, novels have become marginalised as serious texts.
I'd always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s as substitutes for experience.
Writers and readers are still trying to work out unresolved problems between men and women, and that is why millions of women around the world are hooked on romantic fiction. So am I.
I feel like elements of race and identity and ethnicity are sort of missing in all of literature, not just in women's literature.
Women's stories have been neglected for so long - unless they were queens. Exploring the history of women is a way of redressing that imbalance.
I think as women we've always been very used to growing up reading and identifying with male protagonists, especially in fantasy. There's a saying in publishing that girls will read about boys, but boys will only read about boys, and it's important to give women strong heroines.
There's such an array of brilliant roles for young women. You read all these amazing young women going through different stages in their life - different stages, different fascinations, different textualities, different friendships.
There's still a massive inequality between the genders. If you look at the trajectory of a male actor's career, there's no hesitation or hiatus. But women after the age of 35 to 40 are rarely placed in the centre of the story.
Stories about the ongoing dramas in our lives as we age are not being told because women find it difficult to be honest about what's going on - about, for example, our heightened sexuality as we age or about living in a society that only values youth.