As part of Bookweek Scotland 2016, we will welcome Ethyl Smith into the Women’s Library on Thursday 24th November from 12:30-2:30, where she will host the next anticipated edition of our Story Café Specials. Ethyl will be joining us to discuss, elaborate and read from her much acclaimed historical novel Changed Times, which also happens to be her debut. Set in tumultuous 17th century southern Scotland at the time of the Covananters rebellion, and written in the Scots dialect, Changed Times whisks us back to a time in our little country’s history where greed, power and religion, as they so often have, created a dangerous mix and threatened the lives and long-held traditions of thousands.
In honour of Ethyl’s work – and female writers like her world over and through the ages – I’ve complied a short list of five of my favourite historical fiction written by women, about women, for women.
1. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks: This book reminded me frequently of one of my favourites – Nathaniel Hawthorne’s astounding The Scarlet Letter. Much like it, Year of Wonder is a novel written about a young woman on the margins of society, but a young woman that that society cannot deny. Our protagonist – the young, gutsy, smart Anna – finds herself pitted against unlikely survival; poor, starving and in a world infested by plague. The author, Geraldine Brooks, deals with, and in her own way questions, the matters that still bother women today — from bitch backstabbing to social status to romance and affairs — while remaining true to the social setting and historical time.
2. Orlando by Virginia Woolf: One of my all time favourite novels, Woolf’s classic Orlando is a dramatic tale of progressiveness and socio-political commentary far beyond its years. The novel’s protagonist, the eponymous Orlando is a gender-bending and time-bending mystery, a character of varying personalities and desires, who begins the story as a young man and ends it as a middle-aged woman. The backdrop to the novel is grand and sumptuous, fast yet slow, and ever-changing, with the plot spanning three centuries as Orlando negotiates all the transformations entailed. Woolf expertly ponders what it means to have a gender; to be a man, a woman, or, perhaps, most pertinently, to be simply human.
3. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant: The narrator of this work is the Biblical Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob. A novel that greatly affected my life in the time when I read it, The Red Tent explicates the plight of being a woman – and all the physical and emotional turmoil that entailed – in antiquity, and how the women of Dinah’s family specifically had their own sacred spiritual practices that ran counter to the beliefs the men upheld. Through Dinah’s strong and increasingly intrepid voice, this novel narrates stories that the Bible could never tell. Provocative and rebellious, The Red Tent calls out the patriarchy of the time and proposes an ancient and empowering role for women and women’s sexuality.
4. A Sudden Country by Karen Fisher: I was in love with this novel within the first ten pages; lyrical and whimsical in its narrative style, lavish prose that is juxtaposed with the raw and powerfully authentic journey across the Oregon Trail, mired with risk and hardship, that it describes. At its core, A Sudden Country – which tells the story of Lucy Mitchell – is an epic homage to love and marriage and the benefits of simply living simply. Unlike most other female protagonists, Lucy – who has lost her husband and must adapt to the lonely situation she now faces – simply wants to live a normal life, and desires not strength nor independence, but to simply be a wife and mother. Rather than demean her, this trait only makes her stronger.
5. The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah: Bravery, courage, fear and love are the words I’d use to describe this epic wonderland of a novel. Set in wartime France, sisters Viann and Isabelle have always been close. Younger, fearless Isabelle lives the life of a city girl in sprawling Paris while older, calmer Viann is content with her lot in the countryside with her husband Antoine, who is soon shipped off to the front line. With life changing in unbelievably horrific ways, Viann and Isabelle find themselves facing desperate situations and surviving in ways they didn’t know they could. Vivid, dark and exquisite in its illumination of a time and place that was filled with atrocities, Kristin Hannah also makes a point of highlighting the humanity of the time in a novel that provoked in me deep thought and an urge to research more about such stories.
Perhaps from this small list you will be inspired to pick up one of these books and read it for yourself, or maybe you’ll even be inspired to write one of your own. But even if you don’t, please remember to take a moment to appreciate the champion that is the female historical novel writer, who often gives voice to the women who never had one.
Come and meet Ethyl, hear her voice and enjoy a warm cuppa and cake!
This event is women only and for 16+. There is no need to book. This event costs £2 full price and you can pay on the day. We offer subsidised and/or free places for students, people on a low income, unemployed or those in receipt of benefit or are Friends of GWL.
Comments are closed.