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Stacey Halls, author of The Familiars: ‘There’s a real appetite for stories about struggles women have faced in the past.’
Stacey Halls, author of The Familiars: ‘There’s a real appetite for stories about struggles women have faced in the past.’
Stacey Halls, author of The Familiars: ‘There’s a real appetite for stories about struggles women have faced in the past.’

Women’s battles become page-turners as #MeToo inspires novelists

This article is more than 5 years old
Rape, persecution and gaslighting are in the spotlight as writers tap into a mood of post-Weinstein honesty

Female writers have responded to the #MeToo movement by taking difficult themes such as rape and gaslighting and exploring them in some of this year’s most anticipated novels.

From books such as Harriet Tyce’s crime debut Blood Orange to witty commercial fiction such as Candice Carty-Williams’s Queenie, female writers are increasingly tackling subjects that were once considered taboo.

“I do still pinch myself that an overtly feminist crime novel has been given mainstream publishing attention and backing,” says Tyce, whose pitch-black novel is in part an examination of the effects of gaslighting and what it feels like to be dismissed as a bad mother or wife. “One of the things that I have found interesting is some of the pushback suggesting that Alison [the protagonist] isn’t a likable or a ‘good’ person. There’s a long tradition of novels in which women are punished for their transgressions – Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Madame Bovary – and I didn’t want this book to be part of that.”

Stacey Halls, whose debut novel The Familiars looks back to the 17th-century Pendle witch trials to spin a story of female friendship in a time of persecution, agrees. “There’s a real appetite right now for stories about the struggles that women have faced both now and in the past,” she says.

It is not just new authors who are confronting these dark and often difficult stories. Crime queen Denise Mina’s Conviction contains a subplot involving a high-profile rape case; Erin Kelly’s Stone Mothers considers how society judges women who fail to conform; Mel McGrath’s The Guilty Party examines the fallout after a group of friends witness a possible attack; and Abi Maxwell’s haunting second novel The Den examines youth, sex and power in a tight-knit community. All are out later this year.

“What we’re seeing is writers beginning to respond to the way that sexual assault and rape – so long seen as an intimate, private crime – is now being written about as a public crime,” says McGrath.

Candice Carty-Williams: ‘I wanted to write something that reflected my experiences.’ Photograph: Chris Kreinczes

Sarah Davis-Goff, who runs independent publisher Tramp Press, agrees. “I do think that the #MeToo movement has been quite enabling for women in that it’s confirmed our worst suspicions,” she says. “There is something incredibly powerful about finding out that you are not alone, and what we’re seeing in a lot of upcoming fiction is authors working through this and really digging into their experiences.”

One novel which does just that is What Red Was, 26-year-old Rosie Price’s debut, which draws on her experience of rape to examine the profound impact it can have on survivors. Price is wary of prematurely crediting #MeToo with changing the nature of stories being told, but hopes that as publishing continues to place women’s experiences centre stage, so “we will see a greater willingness to listen and to know that abuses of power can be far more nuanced and subtle than we might expect”.

And if the kind of stories being told is truly changing, then that is at least partly the result of readers’ desires to see their own lives reflected in the fiction they read, says Carty-Williams, whose funny and furious debut addresses everything from the objectification of black women to how bad sex can slowly erode your self-esteem.

“There is a growing appetite for viewing the world through a different lens and for hearing the honest reality of our experiences,” she says. “With Queenie, I didn’t want to write an issue novel but rather something that reflected both mine and my friend’s experiences while making readers laugh and cry.”

Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism project, is the author of a powerful young adult debut The Burning, which draws parallels between social media-shaming and historical witch hunts.

“The idea came out of talking to girls at schools across the country about their experiences,” she says. “I was initially shocked by how often I heard the same stories of sexual violence and shame and the silencing of those who speak up, but then I decided to write about it because this generation are so often painted as melting snowflakes when the reality is that they’re a generation of warriors. They’re forming feminist societies at school, they’re protesting, they’re standing together.

“If publishers are picking up on that, then it can only be a good thing.”

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