As a writer, there are several female authors who are super-fabulous in my book (so to speak).
Barbara Kingsolver is... awesome. Awe-inspiring. Her storytelling is top-notch, and her coolness factor gets a boost because she's a biologist as well as an author. So aside from being insanely well-written, her books teach me things I never would have learned in school.
Prodigal Summer is a great example - her detailed descriptions of insects and plantlife are fascinating, and I credit this book with being the impetus behind my taking up gardening this spring. I also now know (from her descriptions) that honeysuckle is both a weed and one of the most lovely scents known to man. See? Education. She also provides a breath-of-fresh-air outlook on wild coyotes and why natural predators should not be killed en masse by humans. Despite PS's lusciousness, my favorite of hers is still
The Poisonwood Bible. Truly epic. Four sisters are carted off to the Congo when their bible-toting, southern Baptist, hellfire and brimstone preaching Daddy agrees to head up a Christian mission in the jungle. Bring faith, "the way, the truth, and the light" (if you will) to the heathen of Africa. Their story is told from the point of view of all four sisters as well as their mother, over the course of three generations. Intense. Life-changing. Seriously.
Sena Jeter Naslund wrote another of my all-time favorite contemporary novels,
Ahab's Wife. I read this in high school and can scarcely remember anything about it except that it's from the point of view of Captain Ahab's wife. Yes, the same Captain from
Moby Dick, who hobbled around the decks of the Pequod and hoped to capture the ever-ellusive white whale. While I cannot remember much about the plot, I definitely remember it being so good and so well-written that I didn't want the book to end. I felt warm and cozy every time I picked the book up. I tend to think that the subject material wasn't the reason, since I vaguely remember a scene featuring cannibalism. At least I know now from writing this that 1) I need to read this book again, clearly, since I cannot remember a single important plot detail, and 2) I've been including this book in my list of favorites based on my memory of how reading it made me
feel. I can say that in reading
Four Spirits, I know that this has not been in vain. FS is phenomenal as well. Note to self, add all Naslund's works to my Amazon Wish List. Christmas is a' comin' folks!
More later...
She's phenomenal. Her novel, The God of Small Things, is quite possibly my all-time favorite book. If not, it's definitely in the top 3 or 5. Again, it isn't only the subject material that makes it great. I love that her prose is more like poetry than any other novel I've read. The story itself is of two young twins in Kerala, India in the 60's, but to limit this book to a plot description would not do it justice. The phrasing that Roy uses is vibrant and exotic. The book positively thrums in your hands when you hold it. Her words have a pulse. The pages bleed. Every time I pick it up I am rewarded. Open it to any page, any moment, any sentence. It's breathtaking.
Margaret Atwood is a contemporary author whose novels are right up there with the classics. Animal Farm. Brave New World. 1984. Distopias, right? The opposite of utopian paradise, where the chaotic is norm and existence has been turned onto its figurative head. Orwell and Huxley are literary icons when it comes to this style of writing. They make social commentary by creating caricatures of society and stretching the negatives so insanely out of proportion that the reader can’t help but notice. I think that Atwood should permanently be added to the list of distopian masters. (Ayn Rand, too, but I’m not as familiar with her work.) Her novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, is perhaps the work she is best known for. And rightly so – a religious coup occurs in government and nuclear war is waged across the globe, leaving behind a worldwide inability for women to conceive. A smattering of women are still fertile, and these “handmaids” become property of the government and are made responsible for repopulating the human race. Brilliant plotline. One of my favorites - and incidentally, another commonly banned book. (My favorite!)
