Every year, the same lists do the rounds: "50 books to read before you die", "the 100 essential novels". And every year, the same observation: 80% of the authors cited are men. Not because women don't write — but because the literary canon was constructed by and for men over centuries. This list is different. It doesn't claim to be exhaustive. But every book here has been read, annotated, lent out, occasionally wept over, and always recommended.
This isn't a "women's fiction" list as if women constituted a separate literary genre. It's a list of books every curious, furious, healing, or simply living woman should have within reach. Books that name what you were feeling before you had the words. Books that give you companions.
Why This List Is Different
A few ground rules before we dive in:
- No men on this list. Not because men don't write good books. But because women don't need a "catch-up space" — they need a space, full stop.
- Diversity is non-negotiable. A women's literature list that only cites white European women is an incomplete list. You'll find Toni Morrison, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, bell hooks, Warsan Shire here.
- Literary quality AND accessibility. Nobody needs to start with Virginia Woolf's The Waves. Rupi Kaur's poetry is a perfectly valid entry point.
- Kristina's actual opinion is included. Because lists without a point of view are useless.
The Classics You Should Read At Least Once
These books have been on "must-read" lists for decades — with good reason. They created a new language for experiences that had no name before.
Virginia Woolf — A Room of One's Own (1929)
Why it matters: The argument is simple and radical: to write, a woman needs five hundred pounds a year and a room of her own. What Woolf dismantles in 120 pages is the idea that male talent is superior — it simply had the material conditions to express itself.
"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
Who it's for: Any woman who has ever felt she lacked time, space, or legitimacy to create something.
Kristina's take: I read this at 22 thinking "it's dated". At 30, I reread it in tears. The essay ages better than the global economy.
Simone de Beauvoir — The Second Sex (1949)
Why it matters: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." That sentence changed everything. In 1,000 pages, Beauvoir dismantles the mechanisms by which society constructs femininity — not as nature, but as assignment.
"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."
For the daunted: You don't have to read all 1,000 pages at once. Volume 2 ("Woman's Life Today") is more accessible than Volume 1.
Kristina's take: Beauvoir is sometimes exhausting in her generalisations (particularly on motherhood). But she laid the foundational brickwork. Read with an actively critical mind.
Toni Morrison — Beloved (1987, Pulitzer Prize)
Why it matters: An enslaved woman who killed her daughter to spare her from slavery. Morrison doesn't let you watch the horror from a distance — she immerses you in it. One of the most important novels of the 20th century, full stop.
"124 was spiteful."
Who it's for: Readers prepared to be unsettled. This is not a comfortable book.
Kristina's take: I needed three weeks after closing this book. That is the definition of a book that changes something in you.
Sylvia Plath — The Bell Jar (1963)
Why it matters: Plath's semi-autobiographical novel about a brilliant young woman's depression in 1950s America. What she describes — the pressure to "succeed at everything" while being a "good wife" — resonates 70 years later with a precision that stings.
"I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."
Who it's for: Everyone, but particularly anyone who has experienced depression or supported someone who has.
Kristina's take: This book isn't depressing — it's liberating. Plath puts words to something millions of women experienced in silence.
Contemporary Francophone Writing — Women Rewriting Everything
Annie Ernaux — The Years (2008, Nobel Prize 2022)
Why it matters: Ernaux received the Nobel for "the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory". The Years is her world-book: a collective autobiography of 20th-century France, narrated in the third-person plural. A "she" that is every woman of her generation.
"All images will disappear."
For the uninitiated: Start with A Man's Place (short, devastating) or Shame. The Years is her summit, but benefits from some context.
Kristina's take: Ernaux is the writer who reconciled me with the idea that writing about oneself can be a political act — not a confession of narcissism.
Leïla Slimani — Lullaby / The Perfect Nanny (2016, Prix Goncourt)
Why it matters: The first French novel about motherhood to spark a genuine national debate. The perfect nanny who kills the children. Slimani doesn't try to explain — she observes with glacial precision.
"The baby is dead. It only took a few seconds."
Who it's for: Fans of psychological thrillers who want substance. Readers interested in class, women's labour, and the blind spots of bourgeois motherhood.
Kristina's take: Uncomfortable from first page to last. That's the point. Published in the UK by Faber & Faber.
Virginie Despentes — Vernon Subutex 1 (2015)
Why it matters: The Vernon Subutex trilogy is the novel of contemporary Paris. Despentes writes like no one else — frontal, unfiltered, with ferocious tenderness for her marginal characters. She also wrote King Kong Theory (2006), her feminist manifesto, one of the most important political texts of the decade.
"I am the kind of girl who isn't supposed to write."
Kristina's take: Read King Kong Theory before Vernon Subutex if you don't know Despentes. Prepare to be rattled.
Contemporary English-Language Literature — The Voices That Matter
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — Americanah (2013)
Why it matters: Adichie's landmark novel about race, gender, identity, and love. Ifemelu leaves Nigeria for the United States and discovers she is "Black" — a category that didn't exist for her in Nigeria. A book that forces you to examine your own blind spots.
"Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become Black."
Who it's for: Everyone. Particularly anyone who has never thought about how race is a social construction that varies by geography.
Kristina's take: This novel changes how you see the world. Her TED Talk "We Should All Be Feminists" is free on YouTube — start there if you're not sure.
Bernardine Evaristo — Girl, Woman, Other (2019, Booker Prize)
Why it matters: Twelve Black British women, twelve interconnected stories, a polyphonic novel without capital letters or conventional punctuation. Evaristo won the Booker Prize (joint winner with Atwood) and was the first Black woman to receive it in the prize's 50-year history.
"she knew that the greatest act of revenge against those who underestimate you is to be extraordinary."
Who it's for: Readers who want to step outside white heteronormative literature. This novel includes trans, non-binary, and queer characters across very different social classes.
Kristina's take: The lack of punctuation is disorienting for about 30 pages. Then you stop noticing. And you can't stop reading.
Sally Rooney — Conversations with Friends (2017) and Normal People (2018)
Why it matters: Rooney has been dubbed "the voice of the millennial generation". Reductive, but not wrong. She writes about desire, class, power dynamics, and existential paralysis with frightening precision.
"Sometimes I felt that he wanted me to be a certain version of myself and I didn't know if I was that person or not."
Who it's for: If you're between 25 and 40 and remember being lost in relationships at university, Normal People will do something to you.
Kristina's take: Normal People is Rooney's best. The BBC/Hulu series is good, but the novel is more subtle on power dynamics.
Zadie Smith — White Teeth (2000)
Why it matters: Smith wrote White Teeth aged 24. It's still one of the great British novels about multicultural London, family, history and identity. Her essay collection Feel Free (2018) is equally essential — one of the finest collections of cultural criticism published this decade.
"The past is always tense, the future perfect."
Kristina's take: White Teeth to understand contemporary Britain. Feel Free to understand everything else. Both published in the UK by Hamish Hamilton / Penguin.
Ottessa Moshfegh — My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)
Why it matters: A beautiful, rich, healthy Columbia graduate decides to sleep for a year. The funniest and most nihilistic novel about gilded-cage millennial depression.
"I didn't want to be awake to experience what it was like to be myself in the world."
Kristina's take: Moshfegh is divisive. Either you love it or you don't understand why anyone wrote it. I'm firmly in the first camp.
Feminist Non-Fiction — For Understanding the World
bell hooks — All About Love (1999)
Why it matters: bell hooks (lowercase intentional) reflects on what "loving" means in a patriarchal society. She dismantles the idea that romantic love is the ultimate form of love, exploring self-love, political love, community love.
"The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression."
Kristina's take: This book helped me distinguish what I was calling "love" from what was actually dependency or fear. It reads like the best kind of therapy.
Roxane Gay — Bad Feminist (2014)
Why it matters: Gay reconciles feminism with imperfection. She loves beach reads, misogynistic pop songs, and shaves her legs — and still defends radical feminism. A liberating read for anyone afraid they're not being a "good feminist".
"I am a bad feminist. I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all."
Kristina's take: Hunger (2017), her memoir about her relationship with her body, is even more important. Read both.
Rebecca Solnit — Men Explain Things to Me (2014)
Why it matters: The essay that popularised "mansplaining" — even though Solnit didn't coin the term. More broadly: a reflection on women's silence, verbal violence, and the ways women's voices are systematically erased.
Kristina's take: Short (150 pages), precise, occasionally funny, always essential. Published in the UK by Granta Books.
Caroline Criado Perez — Invisible Women (2019, Booker Prize for Non-Fiction)
Why it matters: The data-driven argument that the world was built by men for men — from car safety tests to medical dosages to city planning. Criado Perez uses hard numbers to show where women are invisible, and why it kills them.
"The consequence of this data gap is that the lives of women are riskier, more expensive, and of lower quality."
Kristina's take: A British essential. Published by Chatto & Windus / Vintage. Every man who claims the gender gap is sorted should read chapter one.
Intelligent Feel-Good Reads — Because We're Allowed
Elena Ferrante — My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Quartet, 2011–2014)
Why it matters: Four novels following two friends, Lila and Elena, from childhood in a poor Naples neighbourhood to old age. Ferrante (a jealously guarded pseudonym) writes about female friendship with a complexity found almost nowhere else: jealousy, admiration, dependency, rivalry, love.
"All the happiness of those years seemed to pass through her."
Who it's for: Everyone. Particularly anyone with a long-term female friendship that is complicated, intense, and irreplaceable.
Kristina's take: These four books are an addiction. I read all 1,800 pages in two weeks and spent a month in withdrawal. Published in the UK by Europa Editions.
Dolly Alderton — Everything I Know About Love (2018)
Why it matters: Alderton's memoir about her twenties — the failed romances, the friendships that matter more than anything, the catastrophic mornings after. Funny, honest, precise. Won the National Book Award for Autobiography.
"No good story started with 'we were being very sensible'."
Who it's for: Readers between 25 and 40 who want to recognise themselves in something luminous and funny.
Kristina's take: This is the book I give most as a gift. It's the book you lend and never get back. Published by Fig Tree / Penguin. Now also a BAFTA-winning ITV series.
Ali Smith — How to Be Both (2014, Women's Prize for Fiction)
Why it matters: A structurally extraordinary novel about grief, art, time, and gender — told in two halves that can be read in either order (different copies are bound in different orders). Ali Smith is one of Britain's most formally inventive writers, and this is her most approachable major work.
Kristina's take: Winning the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize, and the Costa Novel Award in the same year is not an accident. This book is astonishing.
Poetry — Yes, Really
Rupi Kaur — milk and honey (2014) and the sun and her flowers (2017)
Why it matters: Kaur sold 10 million copies of milk and honey and made poetry accessible to an entire generation. Her short poems about trauma, love, loss, and healing have been photocopied, tattooed, and pinned to walls around the world.
"i do not want to have you
to fill the empty parts of me
i want to be full on my own"
Kristina's take: Literary critics sneer because she's "too accessible". I don't care. If her poems helped you through something, it's literature.
Amanda Gorman — Call Us What We Carry (2021)
Why it matters: Gorman read her poem at Biden's inauguration aged 22. Her debut collection explores collective pandemic trauma, memory, and resistance. Her language is political and musical simultaneously.
"We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be."
Kristina's take: Start by watching her inauguration reading on YouTube. If it moves you, order the collection.
Warsan Shire — Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head (2022)
Why it matters: Shire is the Somali-British poet whose texts were incorporated into Beyoncé's Lemonade. Her first official collection explores exile, family memory, and physical and psychological borders.
"Later that night
I held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?"
Kristina's take: That poem has been shared millions of times. There's a reason. Shire writes what others don't dare. Published in the UK by Chatto & Windus.
How to Build Your Women's Reading List — Practical Guide
You don't have to read everything at once. And you don't have to read in order. Here's how I think about building a coherent reading list:
By your current mood
- You want to be angry: Despentes, bell hooks, Solnit, Criado Perez
- You want to understand: Beauvoir, Adichie, Gay
- You want to feel: Ferrante, Plath, Shire
- You want comfort: Alderton, Kaur, Smith
- You want to be unsettled: Morrison, Moshfegh, Evaristo
By reading commitment
- One hour a week: Rupi Kaur, Dolly Alderton, Ernaux (the short ones)
- Regular reader: Rooney, Slimani, Zadie Smith's essays
- Full immersion: Ferrante (quartet), Beauvoir (The Second Sex), Morrison (Beloved)
Budget
- Free: Public library — everything on this list is available
- Under £10: Penguin Modern Classics, Virago Modern Classics (almost everything exists in paperback)
- Investment: The four Ferrante volumes in hardback (~£14 each) — but paperbacks exist from £9.99
Frequently Asked Questions
Are these books only for women?
No. These books were written by women and often speak to female experience — but they are for any curious reader. Beloved by Toni Morrison is in the New York Times' top 10 American novels of the 20th century, all categories. Women's literature is not a sub-genre: it is literature.
Where should I start if I barely read?
Start with Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton or milk and honey by Rupi Kaur. Both are short, accessible, and gripping. For a novel, Normal People by Sally Rooney is compulsive. The important thing is finding what makes you want to turn the page.
What's the Women's Prize for Fiction, and how do I use it?
The Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize) has been awarded annually since 1996 to the best novel written in English by a woman. Past winners include Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Lionel Shriver, Ali Smith, and Bernardine Evaristo (also a Booker winner). The longlist, announced each April, is the best annual guide to essential women's fiction in English. Waterstones and The Guardian Books both carry excellent coverage of the prize.
What is Virago Press?
Virago is Britain's most important feminist publishing house, founded in 1973. Their green-spined Virago Modern Classics imprint has brought back into print books by Angela Carter, Rosamond Lehmann, Mary Webb, and dozens of other women writers who had fallen out of circulation. If you find a green Virago spine in a charity shop, buy it without reading the back.
The Ferrante Neapolitan quartet — in what order?
In order: My Brilliant Friend (Book 1), The Story of a New Name (Book 2), Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Book 3), The Story of the Lost Child (Book 4). The order is essential — this is one novel in four volumes. Published in the UK by Europa Editions.
Where can I find reliable recommendations beyond this list?
In the UK: The Guardian Books (free, excellent), London Review of Books (subscription, rigorous), Waterstones staff picks (genuinely good), Lit Hub (US-based but global coverage). The Women's Prize for Fiction and the Booker Prize longlists are essential annual guides. For French-language fiction, Télérama livres and Le Monde des Livres are authoritative.