Are there no books with female protagonists 40 and over???

[Frikonastick]

It’s doing my head in! Please recommend me a book that centres around a woman 40 or over. Please. I beg of you.

Cheating but would 37 do? it’s just I love Miss Similla’s feeling for Snow so much

I came on to say All Fun and Games until Someone Loses an Eye by Christopher Brookmyre but see that several posters have beaten me to it!

miss Garnett’s Angel by Salley Vickers.

@wellthatsunusual

Or 3) an unhappily married empty nester who

:) I wondered if Kathy reichs forensic anthropologist character falls into this bracket

Have to second Jenny eclair, she’s an amazing novelist and her novels are often about older women. They’re funny but also dark.

The Thursday Murder Club- Richard Osman. TBF I haven’t finished it, but there’s a lot of older females in major roles.

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald is great, and I liked Judgement Day by Penelope Lively. I'll have to mention The Pumpkin Eaters by Penelope Mortimer as well just to get all the Penelopes in!

Robert Musil, 'The man without qualities' has a male main character (obvs) but several well-invented and important female characters at least one of whom could be over 40 (most peoples' ages aren't mentioned). Big long book but worth digging into.

Uwe Johnson, 'Anniversaries' focuses on a single mother in her 30s, but is a whole microcosm. Of Nazi Germany, but it's good. Not exactly a laugh a minute, but fantastically well observed.

Sorry, this is not really what you asked for, they're just such good books.

Still Alice - Lisa Genova. So good, but so sad.

Linda La Plante's Jane Tenison books.

Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow. She's 37 so not quite in your over 40 age bracket - but close...and it's a good read.

What a great thread!

I second Still Alice.

Sara Maitland - Three Times Table.

A 40-ish woman shares a house with her mother and teenage daughter. It’s has some fantasy elements but is mostly about their relationships.

Completely agree re so much crime writing being extremely icky in its treatment/obsession with women being murdered, tortured etc. A writer I respect once said to me “I try and avoid reading anything that gets most of its energy from violence against women” which really struck a chord with me... I try and avoid this now too!

The Whitstable Pearl mysteries by Julie Wassmer are great. Pearl is restaurant owner and also private detective in her forties.

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/kindle/series/B0888VGMB3?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Pearl is also a single mum and empty nester with her son at Canterbury Uni. She’s a well rounded character. Her mum, in her sixties, is also a central character.

Douglas Kennedy’s protagonists are all woman, of various ages. The lead in “Five Days” is certainly over 40.

For sci-fi, the Honor Harrington series by David Weber - a sort of space Hornblower with female protagonist. I do have to tune out the scale of casualties in galactic warfare, but very interesting political set-ups, and very strong female characters. The navy is equal opportunities!

@Frikonastick

Anything in sci-fi/ fantasy? I like to be well rounded 😁

How about Nicole Des Jardins in the RAMA series,authored by the incredible Arthur C. Clarke?

I would like to add that Nicole Des Jardins starts out at the age of thirty-ish but you follow her story right to the end of her life.

Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
South Riding, Winifred Holtby
P G Wodehouse has several older women characters who take no nonsense
Patricia Highsmith, Carol

The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie is a cracker and won the Stella prize

The Enchanted April - Elizabeth Von Armin

All Passion Spent - Vita Sackville West

Pratchett is excellent on women if you’ll read fantasy - not just the witches as mentioned above, who have several books to themselves, but Miss Flitwick (Reaper Man), Lady Sybil (Guards Guards & all the sequels), and varied minor characters including Lady Roberta Messerole, Miss Tick, Mrs Proust, Mrs Gogol, Lady Margolotta etc. One of the reasons he remains my favourite author is he writes both sexes as people equally, with no disdain for women or old people or different social groups.

Mavis Cheek dies a good line in older ladies reclaiming their lives.

@RubaiyatOfAnyone you definitely sound like my kind of reader! I sound totally bonkers but I re-read Hogfather recently and it just felt so utterly weird Susan is much younger than me in it; she was my fantasy big sister!

OP I’ve just remembered a curio you may like - Frank Baker’s Miss Hargreaves. Two friends invent an eccentric spinster acquaintance as a running joke on holiday; then she telegrams to say she’ll be paying a visit...