“Dear Life,” Alice Munro
Munro, who recently won a Nobel Prize, is considered to be one of the best contemporary short story writers, and one can easily see why. Telling stories of characters across Canada, readers are easily enthralled with their problems and ideas, their struggles and their victories, how small they may be. Munro tells us that the last four stories of the collection are the closest she has ever come to writing about her own life, and clearly mirror things that happened in her childhood. Highly relatable and not too difficult to read, Munro’s “Dear Life” is an open gateway into her other work.
“Innocent Traitor,” Alison Weir
I’m a huge fan of historical fiction (who isn’t, really) and Weir’s fictionalized account of Lady Jane Grey was an amazing read. It brought to life one of the foremost players of the Tudor times, even if she was only a central character for a few weeks. Weir almost exclusively uses female narrators to tell her story, with the exception of two male narrators who are essential to the plot (she uses them sparingly). Through her female narration, the exploitation of women is clearly seen, not just through rape and the selling, oops I mean marriage, of women, but also through their manipulation. Girl children are only thought to be useful through the marriages that can be made of them or the positions in which they can be put. This is unfortunately much more relatable than on e would think it would/should be in the present day.