modern popular lady lit (anita shreve to thread)

lots of educated (white) lit ladies where i live and i love them all and this apparently is their bible:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d6/SheriReynolds_TheRaptureOfCanaan.jpg

i can't tell you how many copies of this book i've see around here in time we have been here and i have had my store open. hundreds?

while anne tyler and ann beatty and annie proulx get read by lit dudes (i have long adored anne and ann) there are lots of other popular women writers who seem to only get read by women. or mostly women. not chick lit. for older chicks. older mostly college-educated women. there is definitely canon. Gail Godwin, Elinor Lipman, Alison Lurie, Alice Hoffman, Jayne Anne Phillips, Jane Hamilton (i did read a map of the world, it was okay...), Anita Shreve (kinda the queen), Sue Miller, Alice Mcdermott, and more where that came from. U.K. people probably have an alternate list of examples.

anyway, who do you like and who do you consider a part of this popular sorority of lit fic about (mostly) women and read (mostly) by women?

I thought this thread would be about that horrible nyt essay

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/books/review/on-the-rules-of-literary-fiction-for-men-and-women.html?_r=1&ref=books

if i get a box with this stuff in it, a copy of Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is in there somewhere...

i didn't read that! should i? maybe i should if its horrible.

I just tried to read wide sargasso sea and nothing about it made me want to continue reading it

ime all books are read mostly by women

I really wish I could contribute to this thread but I don't read and am not aware of any of the work by the authors you've listed (altho lol I have met some of them)

maybe aimee bender dunno

okay reading that nyt thing now. doesn't seem too horrible yet. i should mention that MOST of my favorite fiction writers are women and i read way more books by women than men.

she is right about the book cover thing. but publishers are TRYING to court specific readers with covers. The Rapture Of Canaan is about a scary fire & brimstone preacher, maybe if the cover had looked like this more crossover would have occurred:

http://heavenawaits.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/fire_and_brimstone.jpg

but maybe it sold so well precisely BECAUSE women liked the image of a woman, uh, sitting in a chair...?

and i had to get over the cover thing too. definitely. lots of virago titles are like catnip to me now, and most of their classic books have covers with ladies sitting or of a nice arrangement of flowers. or ladies sitting with flowers.

the premise of that nyt article is basically sexism sucks and it does indeed suck. but with this thread i really wanted to know if anyone here has a jan karon jones. i'll bet i would like jan. canaan on her mind as well.

http://ebooks-imgs.connect.com/product/400/000/000/000/000/033/126/400000000000000033126_s4.png

lots of virago titles are like catnip to me now, and most of their classic books have covers with ladies sitting or of a nice arrangement of flowers. or ladies sitting with flowers.

This is me, too

Anita Shreve and Jodi Picoult are the queens of this. When I worked in a bookshop, my (female) boss described them as books for people who don't really read books.

Alison Lurie (I've read everything by her) and Alice McDermott (I've read 3) are really good!

i like what little alice mcdermott i've read. i should read some alison lurie.

i guess joanna trollope kinda fits as far as the u.k. goes? from her wiki page:

"Trollope's books are generally upmarket family dramas and romances, that somewhat transcend these genres via striking realism in terms of human psychology and relationships."

"upmarket family dramas"

"somewhat"

anna quindlen, jane smiley, joyce maynard might fit in here, i am a big fan of all 3 (although imo the quality of smiley's work has dropped off over the last 2 or 3 novels). i've never read jodi picoult or anita shrieve bc the back-cover blurbs have always sounded so awful and overblown, a little bit too soap-opera for my liking.

Barbara Kingsolver? Although iirc I like her.

Rly like her book of essays, Small Wonders.

Ok I'm gonna take a moment to admit that lots of this stuff sound really awesome

marge piercy novels fit here too i guess. she made her name as a feminist poet, but kinda became some sorta atwood-esque figure in the states. though i don't think she has the critical rep of an atwood.

i get sooooo many books in at the store by....what's her name...ursula hegi. and i never look at them twice. maybe they are great!

i can't sell atwood books to save my life, by the way. they are as ubiquitous as old copies of the national geographic. they are literally EVERYWHERE. i'm probably sitting on a margaret atwood novel right now. i think my house might be made out of margaret atwood novels.

http://wow-womenonwriting.com/assets/35-FE6-AnitaShreve.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Nnsg0X_fgUw/TGm7r3KK3fI/AAAAAAAAAbM/ql7ELFEf7cc/s1600/photo-3.jpg

I feel like I used to like Ursula Hegi? Maybe I just liked her name.

she does have a nice name.

if the blurb on the cover of your book is a recipe...you might be a lady lit author.

http://api.ning.com/files/M6olNYM1EBYN0DN6WgKPIUL97ZYC*bLNozQ2k3Q7MlKfqrsrdRj1Zv-Th5A69U65I13si9K9VvYsSmVbxUT52R3zEPJtzpga/kitchen.JPG

"no heroes. no zombies. no high heels. well, maybe high heels."

http://womensfictionwriters.wordpress.com/2011/11/

the colors of the covers are always so soothing. so many little blonde girls on the covers.

http://bookexcerpts.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/rain-dance-cover.jpg

http://stephaniedoig.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/gooddaughters.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_t0yOHV98qcs/S7iipSZBm8I/AAAAAAAAACM/v1PAiEYF2e0/s1600/6a00d414452d953c7f0109d076f999000e-500pi-1.jpg

'can two women grieving infertility and an abortion forge an uncommon friendship?'

is the answer... yes?

so uk equivalent is maybe Barbara Trapido, Deborah Moggach alongside Trollope?

do you know Persephone Books Scott? They seem to have occupied the 'rediscovering lady lit' space that Virago once owned.

Louise Candlish seems about right for the next generation. I think the chick lit boom might have choked this kind of thing for a few years in the UK – Sophie Kinsella would probably have been this sort of writer if she hadn't had the Shopaholic – her novels as Madeleine Wickham are called things like 'A Desirable Residence'.

A while back, Picoult was the writer I'd most often see dark-suited professional women reading on the tube, but it's getting harder to gauge – lots of kindles.

no, i don't see the persephone books around here! ooh, good, something new to look for. and this i definitely need:

http://img2.imagesbn.com/images/103880000/103885836.jpg

http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=119

i want this now too:

http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/pages/titles/index.asp?id=102

Have we mentioned The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard?

'can two women grieving infertility and an abortion forge an uncommon friendship?'

ha! that might actually be a self-published e-book or something. maybe it was unfair to include it with the other two. but blonde is king on a lot of these covers...