100 books like Mrs Bridge

This book is about the legacy of the massive violence and trauma of slavery, but at its heart, this is entirely about motherhood. I have read no other novel that so searingly, brilliantly, and tenderly depicts the haunting extremes— physically, emotionally, and spiritually—to which motherhood will bring a woman.

I’m recommending this book because it is smart, original, mesmerizing, and beguiling and because that smart, original, and beguiling voice is a mother’s. Told in fragments of text that are like stepping stones to a broader narrative, this poetic book can be read very quickly. 

I love this book because its form—fragments of short, gorgeous prose—and poetic language give Offill’s narrative a unique dimension and texture, which is thereby given to the topic of mothers and motherhood.

I’m recommending this book because it brilliantly captures the overwhelm and mania of a woman whose husband of fifteen years has left her for a younger woman. This novel likewise brilliantly captures the overwhelm and mania of being responsible for children and living within the flimsy identity of being a wife and mother. 

What I like best about this book is its darkness and strangeness. Raising children is full of paranoia, fear, and threats of danger at every turn, and a mother’s state of mind trickles down to all aspects of childrearing. It is refreshing to read such well-rendered (even darkly funny) desperation of a mom. 

I’m recommending this book because it is a beautifully written book that centers a universally human event that is overlooked in literature: childbirth.

This book frankly and unflinchingly depicts a harrowing experience of a woman giving birth in a hospital. This book also tells the stories of two very different women—the woman in labor and the labor nurse. The book covers only hours of a life but touches on themes and motifs that concern all human beings: loneliness, care, medical care and how it’s given, relationships, childhood, coming of age, city life, mortality, and love.

This novel, by Meg Wolitzer, offers such a twist at the end, I’m not sure how to write about it as an example of a woman writer finding her voice without giving too much away.
The Wife is the story of a Noble Prize-winning author, Joe Castelman, and his wife, Joan, who have kept a terrible secret for all the years of their marriage. Because you know the topic of my selections here, you can surmise that Joan is also a writer, though she hides that fact. Her character tells the story, and we only slowly see the facets of their strange and deceptive marriage. It becomes clear that Joan is a very good writer indeed, and she’s tired of keeping her secret.

This clever tale will make you think about what it means to invent a life both on and off the page. And that there’s no stopping a… show more.

I love the way in which this fascinating group biography of the female partners of renowned male writers brings these usually ignored figures into the limelight.

Ciuraru argues that behind the careers of many acclaimed literary figures stand the important contributions of their wives. These women offered intellectual as well as practical support. 

Many of these literary wives shelved their own creative aspirations to tend to the careers of their husbands.

But after their husbands’ deaths, some of these women found they finally had space for their own literary lives to start blossoming. 

Stacy Schiff is a master biographer. Any subject she chooses (Cleopatra, Benjamin Franklin, Antoine de St. Exupéry, the accused witches of Salem) is elevated by the passion and persistence she brings to research and writing. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Véra Nabokov, the wife of Vladimir, is another pioneering work that proves you don’t have to be at center stage to be worthy of a book. What did Véra do for Vladimir, and he for her? This is no take-down, not the kind of exposé that reveals the great man’s wife as the true genius, exploited and forgotten. It’s a love story of equals, two against (and for) the world.

Many readers knowledgeable about the Jazz Age know about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s many novels, as well as his life.

This fictionalized account gives keen insight into his wife, Zelda. Read to discover the difficulties faced by a creative woman married to a celebrated man. In many ways, Zelda was a woman of her times, yet like so many women overshadowed by her husband.

Read about their scandalous lives—hers in some ways even more so than his.

Dr. Emerson Eggerichs has been helping couples have happier, healthier marriages by teaching husbands how to love their wives as Ephesians 5:25 commands, and by teaching wives how to respect their husbands as Ephesians 5:33 commands.

Despite what the world says today, men and women are different and they have different, not just desires, but needs. The book also contains testimonies of transformed marriages. Husbands and wives will learn principles for talking to, thinking about, and treating each other biblically. 

This is the 75th anniversary edition of a book first published in 1946, a best-seller at the time, and the impetus for changes in the treatment of psychiatric patients. The narrator, novelist Victoria Cunningham, finds herself incarcerated in a corrupt and badly-run hospital with little memory of how she got there; I was disturbed by the way she had to navigate through an obscure, nonsensical bureaucracy that seems more insane than any of the hospital’s patients. Virginia is supported by her loving and loyal husband, but at times she loses track of her memories and forgets who he is. The book is frightening—especially given that it’s based on the author’s own experiences at Bellevue Hospital in New York—but also intimate and moving.