I am looking for fiction that is written by a woman but through the lens of a man ot men—and vice/versa—that anyone on this sub finds effective or at least respectable.
Note please: I do realize this is a somewhat delicate topic, and as such I’m not interested in much debate just recommendations. If you’re unable, please, and with respect, move elsewhere.
by DatabaseFickle9306
25 Comments
any specific genres or are any alright?
Ursula Le Guin’s MC in the Wizard of Earthsea is a guy.
Do you mean authors like George Eliot, who wrote under a male pen name but was female?
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb.
Ian McEwan __ Chesil Beach
José Luís Sampedro __ La Vieja Sirena
The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller
* The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
* Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher
* There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
* Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughan
* The Tiffany Aching and Witches books by Terry Pratchett
* Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
* Moonstorm by Yoon Ha Lee
I am just about finished with S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. She was 16 in the 1960s writing about the rough lives of teenagers in Oklahoma who fought and were known as greasers. I’m not doing this justice. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. My 13-year-old niece begged me to read it. I’m shocked and impressed she has read it. I can’t wait to discuss it w her.
*Gilead*, by Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Kevin Wilson *Nothing to See Here*
Lois McMaster Bujold. Her Vorkosigan series is in large part with a male main character. These books are also great reads.
You might like Piranesi for this.
It starts from a very unusual perspective and slowly changes how you understand everything around the narrator.
Robert Jackson Bennett writes the female perspective so well that I felt compelled to look up if it was a pen name. The Founders Trilogy for a long read or American Elsewhere for something shorter.
Attica Locke, who is female, has two series of crime fiction that are as good as literary fiction, set in East Texas. She and her characters are POC. Her main characters, one an ex Texas Ranger, the other a small town lawyer, are presented with more sensitivity and depth than most male characters by male authors in crime fiction –or any fiction. They are the Highway Series 59 trilogy, and the Jay Porter series (2 books).
Time-Marked Warlock by Shami Stovall has a man as the main character. I went in blind and didn’t know the author was a woman until I saw the bio at the end of the book.
Mating by Norman Rush. Comedy of manners among anthropologists falling in love in Botswana.
Wolf Hall
Regeneration Trilogy
Memoirs of Hadrian
Dolly Alderton’s Good Material was written because she wanted to explore the breakdown of a (heterosexual) relationship through the lens of the man.
Adrian Mole (all of them) by Sue Townsend is the ultimate infiltration of the male psyche though. From pubescence through to middle age, just fantastic, bitingly funny books.
Anne Rivers Siddons, who has written many novels
almost all about the American Southeast, including the Outer Banks, the Low Country, and Atlanta, usually uses a female first person narrator. In one of her most substantial novels, Peachtree Road, the narrator is a man, who is from one of the monied high society families of Buckhead (Atlanta), Shep Bondurant III. The story takes him from childhood to middle-age, focusing primarily on his intense, complicated relationship with his flamboyant cousin, Lucy, who lived with his family.
Shep is revealed by the author with emotional depth.
Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King. TW: >!mentioned CSA!<
Is there a specific genre you’re looking for or like thing you wanna get from the books or just you wanna try to explore this like writing from a different perspective thing?
Als can it be dual-multi pov with multiple genders? Or do you want the voice to just be one main character?
The Witch Elm, by Tana French. Female novelist, with a young adult male first person narrator, who has suffered a traumatic brain injury after a home invasion and assault and must recover, which is slow. During this time the remains of a body is discovered on the property where he lives, owned by his family, and he becomes a suspect by the police. His lack of cohesive memories causes a problem.
For the vice-versa side (women written well by men?):
Walter Tevis, *The Queen’s Gambit*
Terry Pratchett, *Wyrd Sisters* and *Wee Free Men* and any other of his Discworld witch stories
Carl Sagan, *Contact* (although I’m not always sure about including this one because he co-wrote it with Ann Druyan)
I read Grady Hendrix’s Witchcraft for Wayward Girls last year, and I was very leery going in as it’s about unwed teen mothers in the 60s, but I loved it. Definitely a top 5 (maybe top 3) read of the year.