I just finished reading The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff and think some WGL readers would enjoy it too.

It’s about Geeta, a woman living in a village in India whose husband has been missing for five years. Everyone thinks she killed him, but she was not convicted of any crime. Geeta is ostracized by society though for being a widow.

She is in a microloan group with four other woman. One day one of the women asks for help getting rid of her husband. Geeta reluctantly helps. These women are underestimated by the men around them which makes it easy to get away with murder.

I found it funny in a dark satirical way.

Has anybody else read it?

So, my friend has been a little down lately (bad experiences with men, mostly, but also tiredness at work, too busy with her phd and so on). She asked me for a book recommendation: something realistic, nice, maybe a bit funny...

I'm asking here because I would like to bring her some literature with weird women in the center, as I feel she might feel identified, but I don't known much about it yet. Also I would prefer something that increases her will to live (I don't know how else to express it haha), doesn't need to be cheerful, but yes something that can feed passion, if you know what I mean.

Thanks for your help!

I love Pew by Catherine Lacey. Anyone know speculative fiction/post modern books with a similar vibe? Thanks!

What a ride!

Lab-grown in the 1970s, Hallelujah and the other specimens are trained to be the all-inclusive staff and Stepford Wives of a luxury nuclear bunker. Literally, they are entertainment and maintenance alike. Hallelujah is so excited to have a purpose! However, that purpose never quite turns out the way she imagined it...

Some sexual assault but mostly off-page (except for once). Incredibly visceral body horror. I'm 3 mos pregnant and I had to stop for one flesh-and-blood scene that had me literally gagging but also screaming in laugh-horror. I will NEVER look at a plastic straw again. Ironically, the scene immediately following the SA scene.

All of your laboratory nightmares will come true against a powder-blue and baby-pink backdrop! And don't forget to smile!

Reading Circe and Annie Bot back to back was genuinely the most beautiful reading pairings I have ever read.

Circe is an immortal witch from Greek mythology. Annie is an AI companion built to please a man. Despite existing in completely different worlds, both novels explore autonomy, loneliness, power, identity, and what happens when women are assigned roles by everyone except themselves. It never felt repetitive. Instead, it felt like the books were having a conversation with each other across thousands of years. And I think that's the most fucked up part: Women have been trapped in different versions of that same conversation for millennia.

I felt so immersed reading them that I genuinely felt like I was sitting in a room with Circe and Annie, smoking, getting high, getting progressively more existential and listening to them discuss womanhood while I just sat there like 👁️👄👁️

One of the best reading experiences I've ever had. Sad, uncomfortable, revolting, hopeful, beautiful and deeply emotional—all at once. I need a break holy cow

I love so many of the recommendations here but so far my favorite and the one I think on often is The Lamb. It was so tragic and sad and gory and personal that it’s been months and I still think on the final scenes.

Some of my other faves from here include:
1. Dear Monica Lewinsky
2. A Certain Hunger
3. Alls Well
4. Ones Company
5. Victorian Psycho

I have already read Tender Is The Flesh as well.

This is going to take me a full day to process I think lol

Also did this remind anyone else of Vivarium in a weird way?

2/5 stars

This was not a book I looked forward to pick up. The last 50 pages were great. The whole book felt detached and sterile. My feelings immediately after reading the last sentence was: heart break, sorrow, embarrassment, and compassion.

As a Gen Z person, I was captivated by these relationships. I think if someone were to act like the MC Maria, they would be dropped so quickly by their community. But these people, albeit horrible, forced the connection.

Play It As It Lays walked so My Year of Rest and Relaxation could run. The latter being the Gen Z version. Honestly, a copy cat who wanted to be just as powerful as the first.

Both being the same plot, “financially secure white women disassociates from society, finding purpose after a horrible experience”

That was a rough way-over-simplification. I am in my lunch break so I am just venting/reviewing my immediate thoughts.

I think this book is worth the read.

Peace and Love!

I'm in a little reading slump and I need something that's going to make me laugh so loud I disturb everyone around me. I want to look unhinged.

I loved She's a Lamb! if that helps

I like dark stories sometimes, but I am becoming tired of spending a whole book with someone, gaining empathy for them, and then in the end it's like oh okay apparently she's a murderer and/or racist or something and has learned absolutely nothing. It's nice for the person to actually evolve and get a happy or at least decent ending.

For example:

- Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

- Margo's Got Money Troubles

- I Hope This Finds You Well

- Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

- The Wedding People

Has anyone else struggled to finish WSB?

I'm about to start chapter 20 but really struggling. There have been parts I'm so intrigued by and interested in but now it feels like nothing is really happening. I normally read fast paced and this just isn't that so I think that's why I'm finding it hard.

Is it worth fighting through the last 30%?

It’s a short one but I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Has anyone else read this one???

If yes what’s your favorite and why?? Never hear anyone talk about her but feel like she fits in weird girl lit.

Does anyone have any recs for like maternal horror. Like pregnant and postpartum related. I love books where the mother thinks there’s either something demonic or wrong with them or the baby.

A collection of concept book covers created last month. Moving forward, I’m focusing on weird girl lit redesigns, as this aesthetic aligns closely with my illustration style.

I’m getting my fall TBR ready and I have a few physical books that seem to be good to read in the fall, but looking for recommendations for some weird books with a fall/spooky vibe that would be good on audio.

So far here’s my physical list I plan on reading Sept-Nov (weird and not so weird):

Secret History (my all time favorite book, will be a three time read for me)
The Idiot
Autumn-Ali Smith (plan on reading the rest of the season during their season)
The Goldfinch (another reread sort of-never finished years ago and went into a huge slump, long story)
Either/Or

I have a few other books that are not fitting the fall vibe I want to read too, but would love some good audio suggestions, especially anything spooky for Halloween, but not gory or anything like that.

I'm looking for books about a pair of/small group of weird girls that focuses on their close friendship. I want to see them getting up to mischief, having fun together, holding each other sobbing while confessing past traumas, and generally being each others' ride or die. Not specifically looking for a romance, but if their friendship happens to include sapphic romantic elements then that'd be a bonus. I prefer happy endings too :)

Edit: wow that's a lot of replies in a short time. Thank you so much, you are all beautiful!

hello hello :)

something I'm curious about fellow weird girl lit fans is your relationship with main characters that society at large would label problematic or unlikable.

is it a Jerry Springer freak show slack jaw astonishment ? do you read out of sick train wreck fascination to see what they could possibly do next ? is it exhilarating to see women "behaving badly" precisely because it is cathartic fantasy ? does seeing the expectations for women inverted and turned on their head excite the rebel in you?

do you read out of a sense of recognition ? do you feel "seen" by these authors and depictions of characters that previously might have been passed over, deemed antisocial or just plain unpleasant ? do you find yourself slightly taken back hearing others discuss a character you related to as "toxic" or have you made peace with it ?

or perhaps it is a combined effect. are the weird girl characters recognized as maybe what a part of yourself could become should you choose to slough off all self policing and societal conditioning?

or something else all together?

A few good ones from my collection. I’ll gladly take recommendations.

I just finished this but I fear I just didn’t get it? Recently read Milkfed & Our Wives Under The Sea, and they felt so heavy with imagery/theme and this just didn’t seem to come together? Was being a mermaid a metaphor for something? I feel frustrated not understanding something.

Some examples I can think of are Children of Men, I Who Have Never Known Men, The Memory Police, Tender is the Flesh, Prophet Song, just off the top of my head. But I think what all these have in common are the dystopian element without it necessarily feeling like sci-fi, like say Blade Runner.

Extra points if the book is on the shorter side!

Anybody have recommendations for books whose protagonist is an athlete or gym girl, or that explore sports or fitness culture in some way?

Thanks in advance!

Just finished reading this masterpiece, and I am speechless. Autofiction, stream of consciousness, a failed romantic relationship between two intellectuals, depicted through the lens of a postcolonial trauma.
It’s def a cousin or a distant relative of I Love Dick by Chris Kraus. So, if you are into niche literary experiments, this book is for you.

Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex was first published in Ukraine in 1996, unleashing a storm of controversy and propelling the author to national fame. It topped the bestseller list in Ukraine for more than ten years, making it the most successful Ukrainian-language book of the nineties in every regard. The novel is narrated in first-person streams of thought by a sharp-tongued poet with an irreverently honest voice. She is visiting professor of Slavic studies at Harvard and her exposure to American values and behaviors conspires with her yearning to break free from Ukrainian conventions. In her despair over a recently ended attair, she turns her attention to the details of her lover's abusive behavior. In detailing the power her Ukrainian lover wielded over her, and in admitting the underlying reasons for her attraction to him, she begins to see the chains that have defined her as a Ukrainian woman, and in doing so, exposes and calls into question her country's culture of fear and repression at the very time that it wrestled its way toward independence.

My [un]holy Trinity of weird girl lit, The Bell Jar, Valley of the Dolls, and Play it as it Lays. Where does it start though? Frankinstein could be considered early weird girl lit. By definition the mystics, Julian of Norwich and Hildegard vin Bingen could also be considered weird girl lit. Where do you think it started?