Ten Novels by Women That Embrace Ranting and Obsession
(I was talking with Lan Samantha Chang about the paucity of female novelists celebrated for adopting the obsessive or philippic mode of a Dostoevsky, a Philip Roth, or a Thomas Bernhard, some of the writers who inspired her as she was writing The Family Chao. This, then, is a list of novels by women that do adopt such a mode, arranged alphabetically by author.)
The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
Never Did the Fire by Diamela Eltit
Love Creeps by Amanda Filipacchi
Do the Windows Open? by Julie Hecht *
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
After Claude by Iris Owens
Angel by Elizabeth Taylor
American Genius, A Comedy by Lynne Tillman
The Appointment by Katharina Volckmer
The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara
* stories, but they share a common narrator, which gives the book the flavor of a novel
— November 13, 2022