Summary: In This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch, Carvan explores what happens to women's desires after we leave adolescence...and why the space in our lives for pure, unadulterated joy is squeezed ever smaller as we age. She shines a light onto the hidden corners of fandom, from the passion of the online communities to the profound real-world connections forged between Cumberbatch devotees. But more importantly, she asks: what happens if we simply decide to follow our interests like we used to, unabashedly, audaciously, shamelessly? After all, Carvan realizes, there's true, untapped power in finding your "thing" (even if that thing happens to be a British-born Marvel superhero) and loving it like your life depends on it.
MY THOUGHTS:
It is the subtitle that attracted me to this book. What a quirky and timely read it is. And you don't have to even admire Benedict Cumberbatch to appreciate it. I, for one, haven't succumbed to his charm, but still wouldn't have missed reading this.
Tabitha, a wife and mother living in Canberra, describes how she discovered Benedict Cumberbatch when her children were small.
'Something lurched into motion in the pit of my belly, that churning, squeezing madness for more that leaves you in no doubt why they call it a crush.'
Since then she's watched the Sherlock series and the Marvel movies many times over, along with every other starring role of her idol's. And her life became shinier, illuminated, and far more fun than ever before, although she was performing the same old roles in the home and workplace.
The difference to her outlook was so remarkable that Tabitha Carvan took it upon herself to find the hideaways of others with similar stories to share. Although most of the women interviewed for this book are fellow 'Cumberbitches' our fannish 'thing' can be anything that lights us up in the same way.
This book is first and foremost an enthusiastic and convincing defense of passionate fandoms; the liberation document we never realized we so badly need. It strikes such a chord with me, I know I'm among this book's target audience. You'll feel the same way, if the description fits. We are the people whose benign hobbies are sometimes denigrated and trivialized as time-wasting and unproductive, making us inclined to keep them intensely private. The Protestant Work Ethic has infiltrated our western culture in its insidious way until we feel sheepish at best and shamed at worst. Whoever would have imagined we'd need an earnest voice like Tabitha's to tell us the truth. The transforming pleasure we get from our fandoms and passions is all the justification we need!
Quiet personal tragedies undoubtedly abound. Casualties of voluntary diminishment are surely everywhere. Those who heed the content of subtle yet powerful guilt trips will never know what fun they've missed. For the alternative of this vibrant, imaginative, switched-on life (in other words, not having a 'thing') does not feel bad but merely normal. Once about twenty years ago, a well-meaning friend of mine described how she'd switched off her vivid imagination for the sake of peace and contentment. I left her house in a sort of daze, thinking, 'Nope, too great a sacrifice. I could never do that.'
Fanfiction gets a good wrap-up in this book. As a keen fanfic author, I appreciate Tabitha's fondness for it. She has a wonderful analogy about a woman who discovered an entire hidden apartment behind her bathroom mirror. That's precisely how I felt when I thought I'd exhausted the mileage I could get from my beloved book series, then discovered these untapped masterpieces about the same favourite characters.
The statistics of Archive of Our Own (one of my second homes) proves that it is actually more like a teeming metropolis than an extra apartment. Yes, there will always be stigma from people likening fanfiction to paint-by-number art, or packaged cake mixes, or Elvis impersonators. But those of us who are busy doing it know full well that derivative needn't mean unchallenging or un-fascinating.
If there is one thing that occasionally irritates me about Tabitha's style, it's her exaggerated self-deprecation, since she is clearly a highly intelligent and successful person who has maintained a viral blog and an up-to-date career interviewing scientists for cutting-edge articles, not to mention getting this book deal. 'Why all the false modesty,' I kept wanting to ask her. Yet after awhile, this stopped bothering me since her ultimate message is so enjoyable and uniquely presented.
As I often do, I read other reviews after forming the bones of mine. One man wrote a scathing, one-star review asking, 'When she's on her death bed, will she really think, "I'm glad I spent all that time thinking about Benedict Cumberbatch?"'
I'm certain Tabitha would reply, 'Hell, yeah!' It was satisfying to see several commenters tell him, 'You've obviously missed the whole point of the book.' That reviewer was clearly just the sort of person who might stamp out our joy in his reasonable sounding, yet scornfully dismissive way.
This is a happy-making book, fresh and colorful enough to dip into many times. I'm glad a fellow Aussie had the brainwave to give this subject the book-length coverage it deserves.
(Oh, and by the way, I learned that many people producing fan art and fan fiction on the internet are women in their fifties. So there you go, I have many cohorts and didn't even know it.)
Note: If you'd like to read more about fanfic, or even read some of my own fanfic, then start here.
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