IN PRAISE OF READING WOMEN

If you spend any time at all on twitter, you should have a look at the hashtag #ReadingWomen2014. The brainchild of writer Joanna Walsh, it was started in response to the bias of literary editors towards male writers (and indeed male reviewers); not to mention the tendency of publishers to dumb down their female authors’ books by giving them non-scary covers (ie pink).

Walsh thought she might get it in the neck, as twitter is wont to do. Instead, it took off.

As Walsh puts it ‘I’ve listened to female writer friends grouse when their books are given flowery covers though their writing is not; when reviews, or even publishers’ press releases, describe their work as ‘delicate’ when it is forthright, ‘delightful’ when it is satirical, ‘carving a niche’ when it is staking a claim.’

One literary editor (ironically, Claire Armistead of the Guardian) told Walsh that her ‘own feeling was that there is an issue of confidence among women writers’. Walsh disagrees and so do I. Most of the female writers I know are confident and ballsy. Just look at the twitter feeds of Amanda Craig and Daisy Goodwin, Linda Grant and Susan Hill, Sophie Hannah and Jojo Moyes, if you need convincing. Whether of so-called commercial women’s fiction, domestic suspense (god forbid that women crime writers be called crime writers), or plain old literary fiction (although arguably they get a marginally better ride from reviewers) and they have one thing in common: they are all fed up with being put in the corner in a pink frock.

Walsh is not the first to draw attention to this. Jennifer Weiner – the American author of bestsellers In Her Shoes, Good In Bed and many more – has made it her business to shout about the imbalance, arguing that if her name were Jonathan (Franzen) or Jeffrey (Eugenides) her books would have had an entirely different reception. My instinct is, she’s not wrong.

As a female author with some pink-ish covers to my name, I’m all for it. But as a reviewer, I don’t want to evict male writers from this blog - I’ve read some amazing books by men in the past year or so, just as I have by women, and have reviewed accordingly. But for the record, here are some of the novels by women – be they commercial, literary or crime - I’ve read and enjoyed in the last year.

Dark Matter, Michelle Paver

The Burning Air, Erin Kelly

Sharp Objects and Dark Places, both by Gillian (Gone Girl) Flynn

Life after Life, Kate Atkinson

The Silent Wife, ASA Harrison

Amity  & Sorrow, Peggy Riley

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte

Instructions on a Heatwave, Maggie O’Farrell

The Carrier, Sophie Hannah

The Roundhouse, Louise Erdrich

Now You See Me and Like This Forever, both by SJ Bolton

Kiss Me First, Lottie Moggach

Sisterland, Curtis Sittenfeld

How to be a good wife, Emma Chapman

Waiting for Wednesday, Nicci French

Me Before You, Jojo Moyes

The Camomile Lawn, Mary Wesley

The Hive, Gill Hornby

The Woman Upstairs, Claire Messud

The entire backlist of Lesley Glaister

Apple Tree Yard, Louise Doughty

The Other Typist, Suzanne Rindell

Firefly, Janette Jenkins

The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer

The Shining Girls, Lauren Beukes

Longbourn, Jo Baker

Almost English, Charlotte Mendelson

The Sleeper, Emily Barr

Night Film, Marisha Pessl

Black Sheep, Susan Hill

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt

Burial Rites, Hannah Kent

Fabulous Nobodies, Lee Tulloch

The Savage Altar, Asa Larsson

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery

Tweet the female authors you love with the hashtag #readingwomen2014

(This blog first appeared on Bazaar on Books, www.harpersbazaar.co.uk, 22 January 2014)