On toughness - toughest writers of all time?

[WhisperTree]

With a view to adding to my TBR pile, I've been trying to think of the toughest, least sentimental female authors of all time, with an emphasis on midcentury to the present day.

The names which keep coming to mind are North Americans and Continental Europeans. I must have a blindspot for these fair isles, which must surely have their own tradition of stylistic toughness.

Help me out, please?

Who are some of the toughest, least sentimental British fiction and non-fiction writers - the ones who might be criticised as e.g. "cold", "heartless" etc because their style leaves space for the reader to feel their own feels

Another Anglo-Irish toughness queen? Why didn't I know about her until now? Adding. Many thanks @Popthetops

Olivia Manning
Celia Fremlin

Two of my favourite authors, both massively underrated.

Just seen someone else has recommended Olivia Manning - yes! She is amazing! ❤️

Yep, the Balkan Trilogy is the least sentimental depiction of a marriage I've ever read.

No, she regarded herself as Irish and only sold Bowenscourt, her Cork ancestral home, only when she could no longer afford to keep it up after her husband’s death — they’d planned to retire to Ireland after he retired from his job, which kept them in England. She was devastated when the new owner knocked it down. Her work is often remarkably cruel about English people, though she’s brilliant on WW2, and stayed in London during the Blitz.

This is a really interesting question and I hadn't really thought about specific authors although have thought there's definitely a surprising difference between literature of different countries.

Very much enjoying reading suggestions.

Bowen was Irish,

Yes, I know. I had meant to add that but forgot, then it was too late to edit.

Love her books, and then of course that reminded me of her chum

Rosamund Lehmann

A couple from left field

Rumer Godden
Daphne du Maurier

Also, maybe Barbara Vine? Some better than others.

Great thread btw

That must have been heartbreaking, even for a woman made of the toughest of stuff. I wonder where she settled in Ireland, having lost her ancestral home? Elizabeth Bowen now swiftly rising to the top of my TBR pile

Godden is a new name, to me - more research. Thanks @TonTonMacoute

A couple of tough children's authors to add: Noel Streatfeild & Antonia Forest.

She shuttled around without a home for years (I mean, she wasn’t couch surfing or in a tent, she was teaching at US universities for a semester or two, staying with friends in Ireland and the UK, living in Rome to research a book), then settled in Hythe in Kent for the last few years of her life. She died in London of lung cancer in 1973 and is buried next to her husband near the site of Bowenscourt in north Cork. There’s a Bowen lecture in the little church there annually. I hope you enjoy her work.

Has anyone said Jane Austen? She always strikes me as very morally tough-minded. She knows love without enough to live on won’t work, she knows love and money are inextricably linked for women who have no independent means, and as a flipside to Jane and Lizzy Bennet managing to marry rich men for love, she gives us Charlotte Lucas marrying Mr Collins so as not to be a dependent spinster at home, and doesn’t condemn her for it. She thinks the ghastly Aunt Norris would have been a better poor mother of many than Mrs Price, and that Mrs Price and Lady Bertram are different only in their financial circumstances, and that Mrs Price’s marriage for love was a disaster.

Absolutely!

Also, if no one else has mentioned her, Mollie Panter-Downes' short stories written during WWII pull no punches about the reality of the Home Front and what it was really like for women while the men were away.

The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark should be on your list, I reckon. Tough as they come 😉

Ali Smith?

And, I know she is not British (is New Zealand) but Eleanor Catton might fit the bill?

I love Rebecca West’s journalism. Very, very witty, even when still a teenager.

I’ve been meaning to read the Yugoslavia book for ages.

This is a great thread, thanks OP!

Browse the Persephone catalogue to see if anything takes your fancy:

persephonebooks.flywheelsites.com/catalogue_2024/index.html

I was thinking of Rumer Godden too; I would love to re-read The Greengage Summer.

Sylvia Townsend Warner.

Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm skewers a certain type of English pastoral soppiness.

Rachel Cusk
Elizabeth Taylor
Perhaps obvious but Agatha Christie and lots of other fantastic female crime writers
Edna O’Brien (Irish)
Shirley Jackson (American)
Patricia Highsmith (American)

Another vote for the incomparable Beryl Bainbridge.

Also, have a look at the slightly dated threads, there's definitely a strong thread of realism to a lot of mid century women writers. Even someone like Nancy Mitford, who ostensibly wrote comedies, had a streak of darkness through her novels. Or Barbara Pym, light comedic novels but so many spinsters leading small lives.

Has anyone said Anita Brookner yet?

Yes 🙌🏻

I love Beryl Bainbridge. Injury Time is fabulous. Does read like a tv film

And Pat Barker one of my all time favourite writers.

Did anyone say Jean Rhys? Good Morning Midnight an amazing book.

Although Jean Rhys is Domenican-British