Five Books On Women You’ll Never Forget
Fury, wit, longing and grace
Welcome to Five Books For, a newsletter for people who love great stories. I’m so happy you’re here.
This month I wanted to share a few books which explore the experience of being a woman. These books range in genre and in style - there’s even a non-fiction title this month, which isn’t something I often include - but they all examine some aspect of women’s lives and they all have something valuable to say. And of course, they’re all great reads.
As ever, I hope you find something new to surprise and delight you.
Okay, let’s dive in!
The Harpy by Megan Hunter
“It is a bright day; she raises her hand to shade her eyes, sees the light pass through her palm, jewelled red.”
So what’s it about? This is a dark, lyrical novel that blends domestic realism with mythic transformation. It tells the story of Lucy, a former classics student whose life revolves now around her husband Jake and their two children. She has been fascinated with harpies - mythological creatures associated with female rage and punishment - since her childhood and her fascination with the harpy is what eventually led her to an academic career, before she took a break to have children.
When Lucy finds out that her husband has been having an affair, she agrees to stay with Jake. They make an agreement: Lucy will hurt Jake three times, in an unspecified way and at a time of her choosing.
As Lucy enacts her revenge, she undergoes a profound transformation, drawing parallels with the harpies she has long been fascinated by. As Lucy descends deeper into obsession, the lines between myth and reality start to blur, until it’s uncertain whether Lucy - or her family - will ever be the same again.
What’s great about it? This is a beautifully written examination of marriage and motherhood, with a fascinating mythological angle that enriches the narrative. It’s written in beautiful prose, and the themes of love, betrayal, revenge and the constraints of motherhood and middle-class domesticity are deftly explored without sacrificing readability or plot. The book delves deeply into examining the psychological impact of infidelity, the complexities of forgiveness, and female rage.
The parallels between Lucy and the harpy are compellingly done and never oversimplified. The tension between Lucy’s emotions and the expectations on her as a wife and mother is the engine of the novel: where can you go when your feelings are deemed unacceptable by the world around you? What happens when you still love the person who’s betrayed you? Is it possible to find a form of justice that allows a rebalancing of the scales?
The mundane details of Lucy’s family life stand in stark relief against the mythological interludes and Hunter’s writing style is spare and poetic, which suits the narrative and Lucy’s perspective perfectly. This is a different type of marriage novel: it’s more interested in transfiguration and mutation, and the way in emotional turmoil can be played out in shocking, sometimes physical ways.
Give it a try if: you love books that focus on women’s emotional experience; you like books which are darker; you’re interested in stories of transformation; you like stories with mythological elements; you’re comfortable with books which blur the lines between the real and the psychological; you love books with flawed protagonists.
The Change by Kirsten Miller
“Only when her magic began to return did she realize just how much she’d given away.”
So what’s it about? The Change blends crime fiction, fantasy and social commentary, following the story of three women - Harriett, Nessa and Jo - who each discover unexpected new powers during menopause. Set in an affluent Long Island coastal town, the women find each other seemingly by accident but soon realise that they’re destined to work together to solve a murder case which has been neglected by the local police. I don’t want to give too much away as I think this is one of those books which it’s better to go into knowing as little as possible so that the surprises can unfold - it’s much more than the sum of its parts, which makes it difficult to do it justice in a brief synopsis.
What’s great about it? Miller’s characters are brilliant: strong, compassionate, funny women you’d love to be friends with in real life. I liked the fact that there are three protagonists who are given more or less equal weight; it’s fun to read a book with more than one main character, especially when you like all of them. It’s also refreshing to see middle-aged women - so often invisible - not only at the centre of the narrative but as heroes in their own right, and not despite of but because of the menopause. The idea of rage as a transformative force comes up again here, although in a very different way to The Harpy. Here, the women are able to channel their anger into helping others, and there’s a satisfying mystery at the centre of it all which will please detective fiction and mystery fans.
It takes a lot of skill to blend different genres and keep the narrative feeling cohesive, but Miller pulls it off masterfully here. The mix of thriller, fantasy elements and police procedural never feels cobbled together; instead, you’re left just accepting the mash-up of genres as totally normal. It’s only when you finish the book that you realise how unusual a book it was, and what an extraordinary job Miller did in pulling it off. The plotting is cleverly done and perfectly paced so that you’re always excited to turn the page and find out what happens next, and the stakes escalate as the novel develops, which gives the ending more weight. There’s a humour throughout the book which helps make it more readable too: this is a book full of righteous anger. However, the levity Miller weaves in helps both the protagonists and the reader stay sane even as the injustice the women are dealing with becomes more and more apparent.
Give it a try if: you love books with strong female characters; you love books with older people, especially women, at the centre; you love novels that blend genres skilfully; you’re looking for something that tackles serious issues with humour and heart as well as righteous fury; you love mystery or detective novels; you love books with friendship at the core; you love books which have multiple main characters; you like reading books which have characters you’d like to meet in real life.
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
“We pretend to want things we don’t want so nobody can see us not getting what we need.”
So what’s it about? Three Women is a narrative nonfiction book that explores the intimate lives of three American women, focusing primarily on desire, relationships and sex. Taddeo spent years researching the book and spending time with her subjects, and each of them is different: a housewife in middle America who has an affair, a teenager who is manipulated into a relationship with a teacher, and an entrepreneur who has an open marriage.
Each of the women’s stories is told in novelistic detail, so much so that it’s easy to forget sometimes that these are real women and real lives Taddeo is writing about. Despite the subject matter, this is less a book about sex than it is a book about power, desire, shame and the experience of being a woman in a society that values women primarily in relation to the men in their lives.
What’s great about it? This is a book that’s honest even when it’s uncomfortable: it tells the stories of the three women without judgment and much of it is uncomfortable or even painful to read. Whatever your feelings on the choices the women make, it’s thought-provoking and empathetic. It challenges the idea that female desire is monolithic and instead explores how it is shaped by culture, class, trauma and by relationships themselves. Taddeo looks at the messy and complicated truth of these women’s intimate lives without reducing them to cliché or adding expectations to their experiences.
It’s a particularly interesting read now, in the context of the recent tidal wave of romantasy and other books which deal with women’s desire fictionally; these are novels which are full of (often explicit) respectful, mind-blowing sex between consenting partners. Contrastingly, there’s nothing idealised about the relationships in Three Women, which instead takes an honest and unflinching look at the messy realities of relationships and the tangled grey areas women so often navigate.
Give it a try if: you love brilliantly-written narrative non-fiction; you love books which aren’t afraid of complexity; you’re curious about women’s real-life experiences in intimate relationships; you’re fascinated by the messy reality of people’s lives.
Promising Young Women by Caroline O’Donoghue
“Because you can’t keep shoving yourself to the bottom of yourself. Hiding in the shadow of someone else’s life is not a life your heart will accept.”
So what’s it about? Promising Young Women is a dark, sharp, and psychologically layered novel about ambition, power, complicity, and the murky dynamics of workplace relationships.
Jane Peters is in her twenties and fresh out of a break-up, working at a London advertising agency. In her spare time she’s Jolly Politely, an online agony aunt who offers smart, thoughtful advice to her readers - advice she seems unable to apply to her own life. When Jane enters into an affair with Clem, her older, married boss, things start to move quickly. She’s doing better at work, but is it because of Clem, or her own talent? Before long, the affair becomes more than just a secret tryst and begins to morph into something darker and all-consuming, and Jane begins to unravel. Is Clem just uncaring, or is he subtly, insidiously dangerous?
What’s great about it? This is an astute and clever novel which perfectly captures a moment in time: the experience of being in your twenties, in a toxic workplace, trying to establish a life for yourself and figure things out: what’s normal? How much of what you’re experiencing is just part of being young, and how much is part of being in a toxic relationship and surrounded by people who think that toxicity is normal? There’s a level of specificity around Jane’s workplace which grounds the book in a setting which many of us will have experienced at some point in our lives, whether we have anything else in common with Jane or not.
O’Donoghue is funny without being flippant; there’s a dry wit to the book which works perfectly to offset some of the more Gothic elements that she weaves into the narrative. Corporate jargon and office culture are skewered mercilessly but Jane’s interior experience is always treated with care.
Jane herself is compelling because she's flawed and messy: she’s smart and self-aware but deep down she doesn’t always feel in control. I found myself rooting for her even as I wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her to stop her from whatever she was about to do next.
Interestingly, Promising Young Women was published in 2018, before the explosion of post-Me Too literature that came subsequently, and many of the issues it deals with are the same: most obviously power imbalances in workplace relationships but also complicity and how make misbehaviour is enabled by societal structures and expectations. For all that though, the book is never preachy - the focus is always on Jane’s experience which makes it readable while also thoughtful and incisive.
Give it a try if: you love coming of age stories with a twist; you like books which explore serious issues without being preachy; you like books which have a sharp, dry wit; you’re interested in what it’s like to be a young woman in modern culture.
Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore
“Every book has at least one good thing… Love stories and bad news and evil masterminds, plots as thick as sludge, places and people she wishes she could know in real life, and words whose loveliness and music make her want to cry when she says them aloud.”
So what’s it about? In Odessa, West Texas, in the 1970s, a young oil worker called Dale brutally rapes Gloria, a fourteen-year-old Mexican girl. Gloria manages to escape and seeks refuge at a nearby ranch, with Mary Rose, the heavily pregnant wife of the rancher. Mary Rose protects Gloria when Dale pursues her but soon finds that she’s in the minority: most of the townsfolk come down firmly on Dale’s side, to the point where Mary Rose begins receiving threatening phone calls. When Mary Rose moves to the town in order to feel safer as she waits for the trial to begin, she meets other women who are also willing to go against the grain in different ways, and as events unfold we see how these women find their own way to come to terms with events of the recent past, despite their surroundings.
What’s great about it? Wetmore spent over a decade crafting this book, and it shows: it’s a masterpiece of characterisation and perspective. The chapters shift between the perspectives of the five main women and girls, something that’s difficult to do well, but Wetmore makes it feel natural. Each of the women is distinct, with her own voice, and each voice contributes to the layering of the narrative and the themes Wetmore wants to explore: justice, race, gender, poverty, small-town life.
Wetmore beautifully balances the intimate, personal perspectives of the women with the wider social forces that are forming their reality, so that we never lose sight of either. She shows us expertly how a single act of violence reverberates through the lives of the women, affecting them in different ways and challenging their ideas of community and morality.
There is a brutal honesty to the book which makes it compelling. It’s not what I’d describe as a fun read: there’s no thriller-like plot or pacing and no humour to give you a break from the subject matter, but in refusing to offer easy answers or neat resolutions Wetmore mirrors something vital and real which makes the story feel more authentic.
The setting of West Texas itself becomes more than just a place; it's almost a character in its own right. When you’re reading you can feel the heat of the sun and the dusty wind and there is something about the sparse, uncompromising landscape that echoes through the emotions of the book and even through Wetmore’s prose, which is both economical and poetic. There’s nothing flowery here, just plenty of sharply evocative imagery which allows the tensions to simmer under the surface.
Give it a try if: you love literature; you love serious books on serious subjects; you like books which refuse to offer neat, easy answers; you like books where the setting becomes a character in the story; you like books which feature multiple perspectives; you like books which are beautifully written.
Thanks for reading!
I hope you found something good to read here. As ever, I’d love to hear if you’ve read and loved (or even hated) any of the books here, and which ones you’d add to the list. You can reply directly to this email or leave a comment by clicking the button below.
Join me next time for the fun stuff edition, where I’ll share an extra recommendation, a poem and a few great links to read. I also have a brilliant recommendation for you over at my Global Comment Great Adaptations column later in the month - I’ll share the link in the next edition so stay tuned for that.
In the meantime, I wish you happy reading,
Kate
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What tantalizing reviews; I’m starting with The Harpy today. THANK YOU
Thanks Kate! I needed some I inspiration for my summer reading list. I love books about strong women coming into their own, whatever that may look like for them.