A window into the world of women with 6 books for fall

The close-knit, competitive, vulnerable and beautiful relationships within societies of women are on full display in a selection of works that are perfect for any fall bookshelf.

These books consider the roles and voices within groups where women are victimized and ones where they are given great power and agency. The stories delve into ways in which women communicate and survive — and the manners in which they both aid and shut each other down. 

As women become more vocal on the world stage, they create powerful networks for themselves, the way men have always done. Goodbye to the old boys' clubs. These books deal with the rich mines of experience in the new girls' clubs.

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Queenie is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman breaking up with a white man. The book is narrated in her voice which is so honest, so funny, and so, possibly misguided, that she starts to lose the grasp she once had on life. Looking for support, she starts a text chain with her three best friends, who have never met.

She calls them the Corgis, because the Queen loves her corgis. They all linked up with Queenie at different stages of her life. One friend is from elementary school, one is from university, and the last is from work. 

Queenie starts to have affairs with men in a self-destructive manner. Many of these encounters are with men who fetishize her skin colour. Most of them are followed up with cringe-worthy trips to the gynecologist which reflect inherent racism and stereotypes in British society.

She texts the Corgis all the details of her sex life and they answer with advice and guidance. This, to us, is one of the best aspects of the book. Female friendship is the only thing that Queenie feels like she has left in life. They help her see her life through different lenses and evaluate it both more clearly and more hilariously.

Bunny by Mona Awad

Mona Awad's follow up to her award winning debut, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, is a deep dive into the surreal world of MFA writing programs.

We follow Samantha Heather Mackey as she navigates an Ivy League writing program that is dominated by an elite group of young women who refer to each other as Bunny.

The movie Heathers has been referred to often in discussions about this novel and it is apt. However, the reader must imagine the Heathers as being overeducated and gifted. As they draw Samantha into their overly intense cult-like world, the book breaks into magical realism, including lawns covered with actual bunnies. The eccentric, sometimes terrifying, plot is heightened by Awad's own brilliant writing. 

In an on-stage interview in Montreal, Awad stated that in writing programs, one is encouraged to be both vulnerable and creative, which creates fertile ground for horror. 

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

This book shines a light on five women who were murdered by Jack the Ripper. Rubenhold resurrects their pasts through incredible research and investigation. Her portraits are epic in detail and luminous in humanity. She dispels the myth that all the women were prostitutes. 

Instead, five lower class Victorian women come to life in such a vibrant manner, you will feel as though you are on the dingy, hectic streets of London in the late 1800s. By creating these portraits, Rubenhold not only gives us insight into these particular five women, but into all Victorian women at the time — along with the obstacles and pitfalls they regularly experienced. It is an incredible work of scholarship, but also a heartbreaking page turner. 

The last chapter is a list of all the items the women had on them when their bodies were found. That alone had us in tears.

I Become A Delight to My Enemies by Sara Peters

This is an experimental text made up of a series of poetic segments, each narrating the voice of a different woman from a place called Town. It is a distinct, brutal and achingly beautiful chorus. The women delve into friendship, rape, subjugation, objectification, motherhood, love, erotic desire, incest and murder. 

There are moments of unexpected transcendence when a girl will describe her body or her mother. There are others which are transgressive and jolt the reader's consciousness awake, allowing them to turn the page and confront an epiphany with their barriers down. It is a complicated, brave work of art. 

Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott

Truman Capote was great friends with the socialites of New York City, from Babe Paley to Lee Radziwill. He was their confidante who travelled, lunched and shopped with them. When he published an excerpt from his unfinished novel Answered Prayers, detailing all the scandals and secrets of their lives, he was viciously rejected from their circles.

Swan Song is told from the collective voice of the socialites. They reveal, in their own words, the scandals Capote was talking about in his posthumously published book. 

It almost seems inappropriate to read — that's how fun their over-the-top and depraved universe is. The book is as delicious and addictive as listening to gossip. The women also turn a critical eye on Capote and his motives for this seemingly vindictive, but possibly amorous action. 

In the end, the socialites come across as spoiled, frivolous and vulnerable. But also, they come across as brilliant women who lived at a time when their creativity was untapped as they expended all their energy focusing on marrying well.

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

When we heard this new YA book was being marketed as a female Lord of the Flies, we were very intrigued!  

A girl's boarding school is quarantined after all the students and teachers start to get infected by what they call the Tox. No one is sure when it will be their turn to contract the frightening plague. Once infected, the disease changes the person's physical form — one girl grows a second spine, for instance. We follow three students at the school who are best friends. 

The books opens with the three of them fighting violently for the single orange that was delivered to the school that week. Despite going insane because of the enforced seclusion of the school, they love each other very much. One of the three girls disappears one night after starting to feel the effects of the Tox. 

How far will they go to find her and get to the bottom of what is happening?

The environmental landscape of the book reminds us of Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation. Every time they go out into the forest, they see how the disease has affected their island. Their physical deformities are like those in Charles Burns's graphic novel Black Hole. We highly recommend this book for young adult readers.