With warmer days and pink blossoms on the trees, March blends into April, concluding Women’s History Month. Women have brought brilliant stories and characters to life for thousands of years, ranging from Sappho’s beautiful love poems to Margaret Atwood’s eerie dystopian societies.
This rendition of Bookstop is here to celebrate these powerful writers and stories. Whether you are interested in taking a more in-depth look into feminism or simply wish to support female authors, there is something for every modern feminist in this list.
“The Awakening” by Kate Chopin
The novel primarily coined with starting the early feminist movement, “The Awakening” features Edna Pontellier’s search for independence in a world built to fight it. Published at the turn of the 20th century, Chopin explores women’s sexuality in a way that had never been done before. Through her creative endeavors and controversial writings, this novel remains just as empowering over one hundred years after its original publication.
“My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh
Ottessa Moshfegh’s critically acclaimed novel follows an unnamed narrator on her unconventional journey of self-discovery. Through the assistance of a morally questionable psychiatrist, she takes a wide array of medications to induce sleep, resting her eyes and resigning from life for an entire year. The novel explores themes of self-identity, mental health struggles and, at its core, a character’s search for meaning in a tumultuous world.
“The Rachel Incident” by Caroline O’Donoghue
Rachel is a complicated young woman. Set during the 2008 financial crisis, Rachel works her way through college at the local bookstore due to her family’s financial struggles. She studies English literature at University College Cork, and faces constant worry of the job market she’s about to face. The readers follow Rachel as she falls in and out of love, makes mistakes, writes, learns and ultimately finds her own identity. Caroline O’Donoghue explores difficult concepts in this coming-of-age novel, speaking largely on abortion, which remained illegal in Ireland until 2019.
“Circe” by Madeline Miller
Circe is Madeline Miller’s follow-up to her widely-loved novel, “The Song of Achilles.” Miller’s work reimagines Greek mythologies, this time diving into the misunderstood character of Circe. This Goddess has been trapped in the role of the villain since her role in Homer’s “The Odyssey” thousands of years ago. Through her lyrical prose, Miller reveals there is much more to Circe’s character than her occasional habit of turning men into pigs.
“The Hours” by Michael Cunningham
The only novel on this list written by a man, “The Hours” takes Virginia Woolf’s famous novel “Mrs Dalloway” and modernizes it, creating an in-depth exploration of the lives of modern women. Following a single day in separate timelines, readers witness the lives of three characters: Clarrisa Vaughan, Laura Brown and a fictionalized rendition of Woolf as she writes the titular novel. Cunningham explores the griefs and joys of womanhood in a way so profoundly accurate it’s almost difficult to conceive that it wasn’t written by a woman.
“Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner
“Crying in H Mart” is the breakout memoir from Michelle Zauner, lead singer of the popular band Japanese Breakfast. In her debut, she writes about the tumultuous relationship she had with her mother, who died of cancer several years before the novel. Through her grief, she takes a postmortem look at their relationship, diving into topics she never would have understood when she was alive. Zauner provides powerful insights into the relationships she had with all of the women in her life, showcasing how they shaped the human being she became.