It wasn't conscious, but I guess that one book is the reaction to the other. The first is so imprisoned in a male point-of-view, and the second is a point-of-view that can go anywhere it wants.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.
The first book you write because of the way it makes you feel. The second one you can't help but wonder how it's going to make the reader feel.
Each reader projects their own version of the experience inside their skull as they go along. It's probably true that no two people read exactly the same book.
I think there's a great difference in consciousness in that same way in that when we're young we read books for the story, for the excitement of the story - and there comes a time when you realise that all stories are more or less the same story.
Your first book is kind of a labor of ignorance. You don't realize the difficulty of it. Your second book is sort of a labor of fear. Then you sort of either hit a stride, or you don't.
Many women have told me they remember where they were when they read the book, and how they felt suddenly that what they really thought or felt about things made sense.
The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.
It's not a case of: 'Read this book and then you'll think differently. I've written this book, and I don't think differently.
A book, like a landscape, is a state of consciousness varying with readers.
Consciousness - that, to me, is the theme of the modern novel.