Sister Bernard, the main character in my novel Obedience, is ninety. I’ve always been fascinated – and afraid – of what it means to grow old, particularly as a woman, and I like exploring the perspectives that age can bring. I enjoy seeing older women given a voice, especially when they don’t turn out to be the easy, likeable characters we might expect. There aren’t that many books with really old women as the main characters, because age is not glamorous or comfortable, but that’s why it’s interesting. I hope the novels on this list go some way towards redressing the balance.
In this short beautiful novel, Conxa looks back on a life blasted apart by the Spanish Civil War. The Pyrenean setting of the story is as magnificent and brutal as the action here, but what I love most is the calm, timeless voice of Conxa as she tells her story of love and war and family. This is a brilliant book about what it means to live a long life and the lingering effects of the past.
The beginning of the 20th century: 13-year-old Conxa has to leave her home village in the Pyrenees to work for her childless aunt. After years of hard labour, she finds love with Jaume - a love that will be thwarted by the Spanish Civil War. Approaching her own death, Conxa looks back on a life in which she has lost everything except her own indomitable spirit. ------- Why Peirene chose to publish this book: 'I fell in love with Conxa's narrative voice, its stoic calmness and the complete lack of anger and bitterness. It's a timeless voice, down to earth…
This is an intriguing murder mystery set in the evocative Winter landscape of the Silesia Region of Poland, close to the Czech Border. When Janina’s two pet dogs go missing, a murderous chain of events begins. The eccentric and feisty Janina is funny and warm and cantankerous – I love how she stands up for what she believes in, taking on her neighbours and haranguing the police and bureaucrats.
With DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD, Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Olga Tokarczuk returns with a subversive, entertaining noir novel. In a remote Polish village, Janina Duszejko, an eccentric woman in her sixties, recounts the events surrounding the disappearance of her two dogs. She is reclusive, preferring the company of animals to people; she's unconventional, believing in the stars; and she is fond of the poetry of William Blake, from whose work the title of the book is taken. When members of a local hunting club are found murdered, Duszejko becomes involved in the investigation. By…
Hagar is ninety years old, and looking back on her life as she puts up a fight against being sent to a nursing home. This is a really moving story that makes you re-think family loyalties. The harshness of life on the Canadian prairie shines through, and Hagar’s independence and bloody-mindedness is inspiring.
Above the town, on the hill brow, the stone angel used to stand. I wonder if she stands there yet...
Hagar Shipley - an irascible, independent nonagenarian - has lived a quiet life full of rage. As she approaches her death, she retreats from the squabbling of her son and his wife to reflect on her past - her ill-advised marriage, her two sons, the harshness of farm life on the prairie, her own failures and the betrayals and failures of others.
Even though Maud is old and forgetful, she’s absolutely sure her friend Elizabeth has gone missing – and puts up a fight to find out what’s happened to her. This warm and uplifting story captures the comedy, anxiety, and sheer terror of finding out you and your friends are old, and no one will listen to you. Such a sympathetic and moving portrait of dementia.
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How do you solve a mystery when you can't remember the clues?
Maud is forgetful. She makes a cup of tea and doesn't remember to drink it. She goes to the shops and forgets why she went. Sometimes her home is unrecognizable - or her daughter Helen seems a total stranger.
But there's one thing Maud is sure of: her friend Elizabeth is missing. The note in her pocket tells her so. And no matter who tells her to stop going on about it, to leave it alone, to…
Seventy-five-year-old Florence is clever, outspoken and belligerent, sharp-witted, and sharp-tongued. Reliving memories of the American Feminist Movement at its height, she’s a great character forced to confront her own aging and the difficult dynamics of her family life. Crackling dialogue makes this book a slick and entertaining read.
In this award-winning novel that Maureen Corrigan of NPR’s "Fresh Air" deems “exquisitely crafted...witty, nuanced, and ultimately moving,” a wise, septuagenarian woman who has lived life on her own terms finds herself thrust into the center of her family’s various catastrophes. ¶ A Best Book of the Year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, The Millions, the Christian Science Monitor · Finalist for the Kirkus Prize · A Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice · An Indie Next Pick ¶ Meet Florence Gordon, a blunt, brilliant feminist. At seventy-five, Florence wants to be left alone to write her memoir and shape…
In a convent in the French countryside, three elderly nuns prepare to move into a nursing home; they are the last surviving members of their nunnery. Packing up her few belongings, ninety–year–old Sister Bernard struggles to remember the time she has spent in the convent, the years blending together as a fog of ritual, penitence, and sacrifice. But there is one memory—one face—that is impossible to forget. In chapters alternating between World War II and the present, this searing novel moves between the nun’s tragic, passionate youth and her stoic, lonely final years, subtly articulating the decades of suffering incurred by a single act of reckless love.
Growing up in New England, my mother had a set of books that she kept in the living room, more for display than anything else. It was The Works of Edgar Allen Poe. I read them and instantly became hooked on horror. In the seventh grade, I entertained my friends at a sleepover by telling them the mysterious clanking noise (created by the baseboard heater) was the ghost of a woman who had once lived in the farmhouse, forced to cannibalize her ten children during a particularly bad winter. And I’ve been enjoying scaring people ever since.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunged off a waterfall to her death, leaving behind a legacy shrouded in secrets. Her great-niece Julia, a struggling journalist recovering from a divorce, seeks answers decades later.
Tasked with retrieving Dr. Greer’s discovery–a flower that could have world-changing properties–Julia unearths a story rife with hidden agendas and a missionary community unwilling to share the truth. As she confronts the eerie legends and a fellow traveler with his own motives, Julia finds that the longer she stays, the thinner the line between reality and the fantastical becomes until she…
From the award-winning author of Dead Souls and Poe comes an all-new bone-chilling novel where a mysterious island holds the terrifying answers to a woman's past and future.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunges off a waterfall to her death, convinced the spirits of her dead husband and daughter had joined the nightmarchers-ghosts of ancient warriors that rise from their burial sites on moonless nights. But was it suicide, or did a strange young missionary girl, Agnes, play a role in Irene's deteriorating state of mind?
