5 Best Books By Women in 2017
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Women have been taking the literary world by storm. Be it novels, short story collections, memoirs, and non-fiction, women have been writing, and publishing books like never before. Their work has offered a much-needed female perspective on the world. From brilliant newcomers to established novelists, there were a plethora of books published by female authors in 2017. Here are five of the best:
1. ‘Sing, Unburied, Sing’ by Jesmyn Ward
The book Sing, Unburied, Sing is written by Jesmyn Ward. At its heart, the book is an unforgettable family story. It is an intimate representation of an African-American family and an epic tale of hope and struggle.
Sing, Unburied, Sing won the National Book Award for Fiction and Time Magazine Best Novel of the Year, in addition to making it to the New York Times’ list of Top 10 Novels of 2017.
Ward is an American author born in 1977 DeLisle, Mississippi. Her first book Where the Line Bleeds was written in remembrance of her younger brother who was killed. She was the winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction for this book and the Alex Award 2012 winner for her second novel Salvage the Bones.
2. ‘Manhattan Beach’ by Jennifer Egan
Written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, is a period thriller set in World War II following the lives of a family in Brooklyn during and after the Depression. The book is based on dubious familial bonds, secrets, lies, love, and lust. It starts off with the protagonist 12-year-old Anna who accompanies her dad to visit a mysterious man, Dexter Stiles. Five years later, her dad disappears and she joins the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Yet again she comes across Dexter Stiles which eventually brings her to know the secret behind her dad’s vanishing act. It is a compelling story and an unforgettable read.
3. ‘Anything is Possible’ by Elizabeth Strout
Again, written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Elizabeth Strout’s Anything is Possible is a collection of interlinked short stories. Elizabeth Strout is an American novelist and author, born in Portland, Maine on January 6, 1956. She has written many novels such as Abide with Me, My Name Is Lucy Barton, Amy, and Isabelle and Olive Kitteridge.
Anything is Possible is a collection of intimate stories of people who are struggling to understand their true self as well as others and explores a gambit of human emotions through these stories. Each character in the story tells her own story and then tells tales of others. The various stories contribute to the central theme and are full of surprises for those who think they can guess everything.
4. ‘The Rules Do Not Apply’ by Ariel Levy
The Rules Do Not Apply is a memoir written by Ariel Levy. She is a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and also the editor of The Best American Essays 2015. Thanksgiving in Mongolia is an essay written on her own personal story, won a National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism which is also the basis of her new book The Rules Do Not Apply. It is the story of how she built an unconventional life and also how everything fell apart suddenly. It is the story of conditions of modern life’s social and gender expectations to which every modern woman of today can relate.
5. ‘Difficult Women’ by Roxane Gay
Difficult Women is a collection of short stories written by Roxane Gay, an American writer born on October 28, 1974. It is a collection of 21 short stories about women from different walks of life, each story running on the theme of sex, violence and in most cases both. Gay captures the delicacy, beauty, anger, and frustration of modern American women with her words. Some of the stories are starkly realistic or others are completely based on fantasy.
Roxane Gay is an award-winning and powerhouse talented author of An Untamed State which earned rave reviews and was selected as one of the best books of the year. She is also the writer of Bad Feminists, a New York Times bestselling essay collection.
