Female Writers

Fragglefur

Second Arundhati Roy and Elizabeth Bowen. Also Nuala O Faolain and Anne Enright

dots03

I will add my name to the list of Margaret Atwood fans. I have read Oryx & Crake, The Year of the Flood and The Handmaid's Tale and I found all 3 books to be original, engaging and very enjoyable.

Hermy

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Dowdy

Has anyone mentioned Marilynne Robinson yet? I have yet to read Housekeeping or any of her non-fiction, but the coupled pair of complementary novels, Gilead and Home, are two of the best novels I've ever read. Her prose is painstakingly crafted so as to look very simple and yet it is devastatingly effective in its economy and emotional force.

She was recently nominated for the Booker International award, but lost out to Philip Roth. She got the Pulitzer for Gilead too, and the Orange Prize for Home. A phenomenally good writer.

Da Shins Kelly

Flannery O' Connor and Margaret Atwood. They are all you need.

oranje

pog it wrote: »

Has anyone read anything by Nuala Ní Chonchúir or Anne Haverty? Both feature in the current series of Peregrine Readings from the Irish Writers' Centre and this is the first I'd heard of either of them.

I have read the short story collection "Nude" by Nuala Ní Chonchúir which had some really good stories.
I also have her bilingual poetry collection "Tattoo/Tatú", that is also very interesting if you like poetry. I was really interested in the fact that she had Irish and English versions of each poem.

oranje

Nhead wrote: »

Can anybody recommend books by female authors? I always mean to pick up more books written by women. I have read the Brontes, Austen etc. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I wrote a blog post on my favourite authors elsewhere but so I thought I would copy the entries for female writers as they don't seem to have been mentioned here:

Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie – She is one of the most inspiring writers alive, she writes from her heart and about a world she knows intimately. Her second novel “Half of a Yellow Sun” is a beautifully written ode to a lost country and one of the finest books I have ever read. She has had many short stories published including the enthralling collection “The Thing Around Your Neck”. As she is still so young I hope that I will have much more of her work to look forward to in the coming years.

Kerstin Ekman – She has published many works that I have not read but I have selected her because of three novels of hers that I found quite exceptional. “Blackwater” and “Under the Snow” are two thrillers beyond the ordinary because they are also literary works which is unusual for that format. “The Forest of Hours” is a science fiction work à la Tolkien which was a real surprise for me. Kerstin Ekman is a writer who has covered many genres while retaining a powerful writing style.

Anita Shreve – There is something about Anita Shreve’s writing that resonates with me. Every one of the novels I have read has been a pleasure from beginning to end, she is a wonderful narrator, she makes the reader feel as though they are actually in the story. In terms of literary merit I think that she is extremely underrated, perhaps she is a victim of her own popularity. By any measure “Light on Snow” is an especially wonderful novel.

Mary Lawson – Although this Canadian novelist has only published two books, “Crow Lake” and “The Other Side of the Bridge”, I include her because both those books were complete, timeless novels.

Kate Grenville – I have read three of her novels “Lilian’s Story”, “The Idea of Perfection” and “The Secret River”. I include her on my list because each of these books demonstrated her writing talent, exploring very different themes in different historical periods. “The Secret River” is a devastating read, a no holds barred insight into the barbarism of colonization.

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Alice Munro! I just finished a collection of her short stories (The Progress of Love), definitely going to read anything else I can find by her, it was amazing.

Add my votes for Annie Proulx and Margaret Atwood as well.

Toni Morrison. She's black as well so you get extra points.

Nicola Barker (only read one of her books -Darkmans- but it was 800+ pages long and I barely noticed).

Molly Keane, another Anglo-Irish writer, later and darker than Bowen.

Not sure if she's been mentioned but Anne Tyler.

Isabelle Allende.