More Books About Women

This International Women’s Day post picks up from last month’s post left off, and offers my reaction to a few books by women—fiction and non-fiction—that I’ve rated highly on goodreads so far this year.

Pluck: A Memoir of a Newfoundland Childhood and the Raucous, Amazing Journey to Becoming a Novelist  by Donna Morrissey

As a longtime fan of Donna Morrissey’s novels, I had the great pleasure of hanging out with her at a literary festival a few years ago. In Pluck I learned more about some of the challenges she’d alluded to during our conversations. Her writing about her family and the losses they’ve endured is very moving. Her distinctive voice comes through as loud and clear as it does in her novels, and not only because she herself reads the audiobook version of this memoir. Listening to it was like having her with me, telling me her story. Loved hearing about the road she took to becoming a writer too. Not what she set out to do and I for one am glad she did!

Butter Honey Pig Bread  by Francesca Ekwuyasi

Wonderful to feel so much for the characters in a book. Loved the twin sisters, ached for their estrangements from each other and separations from others in their lives. Especially loved the passionate foodie, Taiye. And their mother, Kambirinachi had such an interesting way of being in the world, I’ve never read anything like it.

“Indian” in the Cabinet: Speaking Truth to Power  by Jodi Wilson-Raybould

Boy do we need more women—people—like this in government. Had I known the background and leadership experience she brought to her role as Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada in Trudeau’s cabinet, at the time the SNC Lavalin business hit the news, I’d have been even more convinced than I was at the time, that Trudeau put her in his cabinet as window-dressing, never imagining that this Indigenous woman would have the gall to stand up against the pressure to play the same old games politicians (mostly white men) have been playing for decades.

Small Things Like These  by Claire Keegan

So much heart packed into barely more than 100 pages and a couple of days before Christmas. The details of life in the Irish village, a perfect capturing of tone in exchanges between the coal man and his wife and other characters, the effect on him of what he discovers at the convent and about himself… all I can say is Wow. I have to look up now what else Claire Keegan has written.

Dedications: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver  by Mary Oliver

5 stars doesn’t mean I loved every poem equally, but I wondered if reading 400+ poems by one poet all at once would prove “too much.” It didn’t. In my review on goodreads, I listed some of my favourites. One of them may just turn up in next month’s post.

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Or, if you’re curious about books by women that I’ve added to my Want To Read bookshelf this year, why not check it out on goodreads

Happy reading!