Excellent article in today’s Guardian on contemporary American women novelists. I love Elaine Showalter, and she really makes me want to read some of these writers. I haven’t read much American literature at all, although I do love Annie Proulx and her country-and-western narratives set in the rural west. I’ve also been meaning to read Marilynne Robinson for a while, from various people’s recommendations.
Another american woman novelist, Marilyn French, died last week (the Guardian obituary is here). I love The women’s room and am actually in the process of re-reading it at the moment: it’s dated, like a lot of the great sixties feminist novels, but still very good. I love all those angry, personal novels of self-discovery of the second-wave feminist movement: it’s good to be reminded how far we’ve come and how intense and amazing an effect feminism has had on so many people’s lives.
Blue stockings 