A Review of Sophie Collins's Innovative Who Is Mary Sue?

Jade Cuttle reviews Sophie Collins's Who Is Mary Sue? (Faber & Faber, 2018) for The Guardian, writing that the collection "inquisitively picks apart the assumption that women lack creative autonomy, and that female-authored literature only ever reflects on real, often domestic, experience." A "Mary Sue," for those of us unaware, is "an idealised and implausibly flawless character: a female archetype that can infuriate audiences for its perceived narcissism," as Faber's copy has it, and was originally coined in 1973 by Paula Smith, "to satirise the unrealistic female characters in Star Trek fanfiction." More from Cuttle:

Collins dwells on the double standard at the heart of Mary Sues. Accusations of narcissism that belittle women’s writing rarely surface when it comes to male authors; Roth and Knausgaard being illustrious examples of realist metafiction writers who are celebrated for navel gazing.

In her innovative title piece – a lyrical essay backed up by a patchwork of quotes from other female writers, including Rachel Cusk (“The misuse of the term ‘narcissism’ in relation to my work is nauseating”) and Jamaica Kincaid (“I hope a reader coming to [her new book] doesn’t look for clues about anything that happened to me”) – Collins illustrates just how often the description “autobiographical” is imposed on women to discredit them. As she concludes: “a woman who tries to invent in literature will fail, / whereas a woman who succeeds in writing is believed to have done / so to the extent that she has been able to accurately portray / the details of her own life.”

Collins’s combination of collage and reportage demonstrates her daring formal innovation. She is, in her own way, writing fanfiction, demonstrating the fine art of foraging with playful intent. But there’s more to it than that...

The full review is at The Guardian.