Bitch Lit

by Mary Sharratt, Maya Chowdhry

Genres: Short Stories, Feminism

232 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2006

About the author

Mary Sharratt is an American writer who lives with her Belgian husband in the Pendle region of Lancashire, England, the setting for her acclaimed 2010 novel, DAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHING HILL, which recasts the Pendle Witches of 1612 in their historical context as cunning folk and healers.

Previously she lived for twelve years in Germany. This, along with her interest in sacred music and herbal medicine, inspired her to write her most recent novel, ILLUMINATIONS: A NOVEL OF HILDEGARD VON BINGEN, which explores the dramatic life of the 12th century Benedictine abbess, composer, polymath, and powerfrau.

Winner of the 2005 WILLA Literary Award and a Minnesota Book Award Finalist, Mary has also written the acclaimed novels SUMMIT AVENUE (Coffee House 2000), THE REAL MINERVA (Houghton Mifflin 2004), THE VANISHING POINT (Houghton Mifflin 2006), and co-edited the subversive fiction anthology BITCH LIT (Crocus Books 2006), which celebrates female anti-heroes--strong women who break all the rules. Her short fiction has been published in TWIN CITIES NOIR (Akashic Books 2006).

Mary writes regular articles for Historical Novels Review and Solander on the theme of writing women back into history. When she isn't writing, she's usually riding her spirited Welsh mare through the Lancashire countryside.

Reviews

[Rosanna Threakall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fun. Nothing groundbreaking.

2.5 stars.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was great to read a variety of tales of women behaving badly. Most were written in off-beat styles, so it was a treat to hear unusual plots spoken in a unique tongue. I loved that this was a collection of short stories too. At night I could read one start to finish before nodding off to sleep.

[Mindbait]

This was billed as a collection of stories featuring strong feminist anti-heroes. Unfortunately a lot of the feminism seemed to take the form of their main character sh**ting all over other women, or just being straight up sh**ty with none of the tenuous relatability or likeability that anti-heroes kind of needed. I think that to have a workable anti-hero you need the people that person is against to be worse than them.

There's one story where a man helps this woman who is being harassed. He gets her safely back to her home. She offers him a cup of tea, then she tries to come on to him but he turns her down because he's married. She slips him a roofy in his tea and when he wakes up, she is gone, she's taken the photos of his family and contact details from his wallet and left a note basically saying she was going to blackmail him. Not exactly 'righteous' anger or revenge.

Luckily most of the other ones were much stronger, much smarter and more enjoyable.

[Scar · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Bitch Lit is a smart and subversive celebration of female anti-heroes; women who take the law into their own hands, who defy society’s expectations, put their own needs first and don’t feel guilty. Characters that give Lady Macbeth, Imelda Marcos and Narnia’s Snow Queen a run for their money.”

As the synopsis promises, this is a celebration of women who take the law into their own hands, put their own needs first and don’t feel guilty. True. The women in this novel certainly do do this. But, and maybe I am just being pedantic, but a lot of these women are not anti-heroes. Some of these women are just straight up unlikeable, without any smartness or subversiveness to redeem them...

See my full review at: http://thespazcanwrite.blogspot.co.uk...