Novel covers: a gripe

Today I am mostly: irritated by book marketing. As in patronising, gendered, and belittling of women's work.

Let's examine a case study: 'The Sorrows of an American' by Siri Hustvedt. This is an important, elegant, intelligent literary novel whose scope includes the Scandinavian immigrant experience in early 20th Century America, the uses and limitations of psychoanalysis, stalking in its many forms, the love and silences between parents and children and brothers and sisters, art, photography, the cult of literary personality, and the ache of grief that comes with the loss of a parent or partner. It is brilliant, as is the other novel of hers I have read, 'What I Loved'. I have no idea why Siri Hustvedt is not on all those 'Great American novelist' lists with the likes of Philip Roth and Jonathan Franzen.

Here is the jacket of The Sorrows of an American:



Pretty. Maybe slightly sinister, given facelessness of girl, and the serpentine seething at the bottom of her dress. Quite appealing.

But I don't think you'd guess from this cover that the narrator of the book is a tall, forty-something male Norwegian psychologist mourning the death of his father.

But wait! There are some female characters in the book! Maybe it is one of them? narrator's love interest - who is black, and has short hair? No. His sister - a serious academic writer, just shy of fifty, given to smart suits? No. His elderly mother? No. The strange, reclusive old lady who holds a secret about his father's past? No. The friendly, overweight undertaker who favours elasticated slacks? No.

No, it's just a pretty, or at least slim and flowing-haired, girl in a slightly strange but pretty dress who bears no relation to the novel whatsoever. But women like books with girls in pretty dresses on the front don't they? So it doesn't really matter, as long as women buy it?

Any more ideas as to why why Hustvedt isn't taken seriously as a great American novelist?