What are some good novels about womanhood or coming-of-age?

6 comments

1. Emma by Jane Austen

2. The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter (gothicy coming of age story)

   I also feel like Toni Morrison and Shirley Jackson have a lot to say about womanhood. It doesn’t really matter which book you pick, but I’d recommend Tar Baby or Beloved by Morrison and Hangsaman or The Haunting of Hill House by Jackson.

3. Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker

   Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

   The Awakening by Kate Chopin

   The Line of the Sun by Judith Ortiz Cofer

   The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns

   Outline by Rachel Cusk

   My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

   Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

   Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

   Also seconding the Toni Morrison and Shirley Jackson recs!

4. *Social Creature* by Tara Isabella Burton comes to mind. It’s sort of like if *The Talented Mr. Ripley* was about millennial women in modern-day influencer culture.

5. *Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered* by Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgariff

   I admittedly haven’t read the entire book because i had a short attention span at the time, and now the book is at my mom’s place (thanks for the reminder that I need to finish reading it lol).

   But I remember it being pretty good. Two women go over their experiences throughout life & what they learned, basically. I’m not great at selling it, but there ya go.

   They also run a true crime podcast so I think some True Crime is sprinkled around the book, maybe.

6. Lolita.
   Wait……..