women-centred fiction recommendations for a holiday read

[BananaPeachPie]

I’m on holiday so would like a new book. I like an enjoyable read but that doesn’t make me feel like I’m wasting my time, so no twee romance, I really don’t enjoy mystery and crime books. I seem drawn to books with women at the centre where I can learn a little of their lives and history but ultimately have a good storyline and great characters.
I’ve just finished The Women and The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah and Small pleasures, all of which I enjoyed. I also enjoyed books like A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Book Seller of Kabul. I like to feel that there is a little hope left in humanity.
Does anyone have a recommendation that might fit the bill? Thank you

I love Emilia Hart's books: Weyward and The Sirens. Very female centric and absolutely brilliant.

The Ship of Brides - Jo Jo Moyes
When we believed in Mermaids - Barbara O-Neal
Iris & Ruby - Rosie Thomas

The Safekeep by Yael van Der Wooden

The Member Of The Wedding by Carson McCullers

The Portrait by Ilaria Bernardini

How about Dangerous Ages by Rose Macaulay? Written in 1921. It’s published in the British Library Women Writers series and there are lots of good titles on there - mainly published in the different decades of the 20th century.

Or The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark?

Or The New House by Lettice Cooper and The Village by Marghsnita Laski both published by Persephone Books?

Or non fiction I’d recommend Free: A Child and a Country at the end of History by Lea Ypi. It’s a memoir of the author growing up in Albania as communism ends.

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See. Both brilliant female centred books I would highly recommend.

Lessons in chemistry - Bonnie Gamus
Where the crawdads sing - Delia Owens
The Tomorrow Project - H Critchlow
Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

Jenny Eclair - Moving and Life Death and Vanilla Slices

All My Mothers by Joanna Glen

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens
The Names by Florence Knapp
All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

The Mercies Kiran Millwood Hargreaves
Queenie Candice Carty Williams
True Colours Kristin Hannah
The Marriage Portrait Maggie O'Farrell
Jaded Ela Lee

So many great suggestions on here. I am going to add Salley Vickers- especially Miss Garnet's Angel and the Librarian (which has a similar feel to Clare Chambers, I think). For an American who writes brilliantly about women and family dynamics I would recommend Ann Tyler.

All My Mothers is a wonderful book.

Stacey Halls - women centric historical fiction

More or less anything by Kristin Hannah.

The Nightingale is wonderful, and so is The Women.

Kate Quinn is also good - The Rose Code is a fab read.

Atmosphere/Daisy Jones and The Six/The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (not read Carrie Soto yet), Lessons in Chemistry, Where the Crawdads Sing, How to Kill You Family, Water by John Boyne (I wasn’t so keen on the other 3 elements)

Anything by Sarah Waters
I who have never known men
Last one at the party
Nina is not ok
Chutzpah by Yhudis Fletcher

Green Frances Sherwood. Venus flaring Suzannah Dunn

Exciting times - Irish author starting with n

An oldie and memoir rather than pure fiction but Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi is a compelling read.

Do you like older books? There are a lot of great modern recommendations here but there is also gold on the catalogs of Virago and Persephone books, many of which are available on ibooks/kindle. Barbara Pym, Delafield, Rebecca West, Willa Cather, Antonia White, Rosamund Lehman and many others, often about the mundane and minutiae of women’s lives and relationships but still riveting and full of humour, pathos and suspense.

Dark Earth by Rebecca Stott
The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas

I now you’ve already had lots of great suggestions, but I can strongly recommend the Neopolitan Quartet books by Elena Ferrante. 4 books about two girls growing up in Naples and how their lives differ, their friendship and how they drift in and out of each others lives over the course of their lifetimes. Men come and go, but their relationship to each other is the most impactful.

The elegance of the hedgehog

I've just 'discovered' Sylvia Townsend Warner, a contemporary of Virginia Woolf (and with no little overlap). (I first heard of her, shamefully, after a statue of her was unveiled a few months ago, and that was newsworthy because statues of non-royal, non-mythological women are still extremely rare!)

I read Lolly Willowes first, as what I'd heard of it (single spinster woman rebels in middle-age, goes off to live in a hovel in the woods, gets a cat, turns into a witch and becomes same-sex attracted) struck a chord with me! It's really good. She's a very wicked writer, deftly constructed prose and dry humour. I'm just finishing The Corner That Held Them which is a portrait of a group of medieval nuns. Trust me, it's a lot more engrossing than that sounds! Both books would easily pass the Bechdel Test for most parts of them.

I know where you buried your husband by Marie O'Hare. It is funny, women led and not too demanding!

Now finished this book, and 7 days later I'm still thinking about it.
An excellent book, with a beautiful and clever storytelling tackling a very difficult life event.