8 books exploring the trope of the ‘unhinged woman’ you need to read
Time and time again we’ve heard the cautionary tale of women breaking from gendered expectations. From Lady Macbeth to Bertha Mason to even Medusa, classic literature and history is littered with the ‘unhinged woman’. We’ve always been culturally fascinated by stories about vengeful, angry or murderous women, but there’s a new wave of literature that’s reclaiming the trope of the ‘unhinged’ anti-heroine as a feminist icon. This emerging disection asks whether these characters are really unhinged at all, or just living out our darkest fantasies of empowerment and catharsis.
Want to sink your teeth into some of the best? Here’s our recommendations for books featuring complicated anti-heroines to add to your reading list…
Nightcrawling - Leila Mottley
Kiara Johnson does not know what it is to live as a normal seventeen-year-old. With her mother in a rehab facility and an older brother who devotes his time and money to a recording studio, she fends for herself - and for nine-year-old Trevor, whose own mother is prone to disappearing for days at a time.
As the landlord of their apartment block threatens to raise their rent, Kiara finds herself walking the streets after dark, determined to survive in a world that refuses to protect her. Then one night Kiara is picked up by two police officers, and the gruesome deal she is offered in exchange for her freedom lands her at the centre of a media storm. If she agrees to testify in a grand jury trial, she could help expose the sickening corruption of a police department. But honesty comes at a price - one that could leave her family vulnerable to their retaliation, and endanger everyone she loves.
A raw and compelling depiction of sexual exploitation and a gripping account of a struggle for survival. Timely and relevant, Nightcrawling is a brilliant debut with mesmerising prose that makes it impossible to put down.
Nightbitch - Rachel Yoder
One day, the mother was a mother but then, one night, she was quite suddenly something else.
At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. She had imagined - what was it she had imagined? Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind.
Instead, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice...
With its clear eyes on contemporary womanhood and sharp take on structures of power, Nightbitch is a subversive read that will make you want to howl in laughter with its relatable observations. Addictive enough to be devoured in one sitting, this is an unforgettable novel from a blazing new talent.
Convenience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata
Keiko has never really fitted in. At school and university people find her odd and her family worries she'll never be normal. To appease them, Keiko takes a job at a newly opened convenience store. Here, she finds peace and purpose in the simple, daily tasks and routine interactions.
She is, she comes to understand, happiest as a convenience store worker. But in Keiko's social circle it just won't do for an unmarried woman to spend all her time stacking shelves and re-ordering green tea. As pressure mounts on Keiko to find either a new job, or worse, a husband, she is forced to take desperate action…
A dark and hilarious take on society's expectations of the single woman. This slice of Japanese fiction is a sharp dissection of gender politics and social expectations in amongst the deadpan lines and off-beat dialogue.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh
Beautiful, young, successful and wealthy, the novel’s narrator lives in an endless bubble of social engagements, caught up in the heady thrill of early 2000’s New York. Superficially her life is perfect but there is a void at the centre of her world.
Fuelled by an unscrupulous psychiatrist - a wonderfully grotesque figure - she begins a regimented programme of hibernation; induced and sustained by a cocktail of narcotics and aided by an avant-garde artist chronicling her descent into self-created somnolence.
This novel is filled with brilliant black humour and full of shockingly prescise observations. It’s a tender and vulnerable look at a woman who is struggling to deal with her grief and depression and feels that drastic measures are the only way get through. Despite an ulikable protagonist, this book will keep you hooked until the last page.
Boy Parts - Eliza Clark
Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle.
Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina’s relationship with her obsessive best friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention…
Both dark and funny, this clever and fearless novel is a perceptive window into sexual taboos and gender roles in the twenty-first century. It becomes increasingly more violent and dissociative is the book goes on, and the unreliable protagonist makes it completely unpredictable - we don't know how much of her memory we can trust.
My Sister The Serial Killer - Oyinkan Braithwaite
When Korede's dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what's expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This'll be the third boyfriend Ayoola's dispatched in "self-defence" and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away. She should probably go to the police for the good of the menfolk of Nigeria, but she loves her sister and, as they say, family always comes first. Until, that is, Ayoola starts dating the doctor where Korede works as a nurse. Korede's long been in love with him, and isn't prepared to see him wind up with a knife in his back: but to save one would mean sacrificing the other…
A morbidly funny serial-murder thriller, this is also a tender examination of sibling relationships in an oppressively patriarchal society and a story that turns the tables on the woman-as-victim trope. My Sister, the Serial Killer is a blackly comic novel about how blood is thicker - and more difficult to get out of the carpet - than water.
Acts of Desperation - Megan Nolan
Our unnamed narrator meets a magnetic writer named Ciaran and falls, against her better judgment, completely in his power. After a brief, all-consuming romance he abruptly rejects her, sending her into a tailspin of jealous obsession and longing. If he ever comes back to her, she resolves to hang onto him and his love at all costs, even if it destroys her…
Part breathless confession, part lucid critique, Acts of Desperation renders a consciousness split between rebellion and submission. A beautiful and raw portrait of vulnerability, co-dependant love, the ownership that's taken of female bodies and how it corrupts our relationship to them.
Bunny - Mona Awad
Samantha Heather Mackey is an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at Warren University. In fact, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort - a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other 'Bunny'.
But then the Bunnies issue her with an invitation and Samantha finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door, across the threshold, and down their rabbit hole.
Blending sharp satire with fairytale horror, Bunny provides a hilarious look at the dark side of female friendship. A darkly hilarious exploration of class and ambition, this one had us nodding and laughing throughout.
Want the very latest book recommendations from trusted notable readers? Head to our Instagram to discover more.