We can't dive straight into our September selections without giving a nod to us celebrating our FIRST birthday!! It’s been a year since we launched Well Read Women and we want to thank you all for being part of our first chapter.
Over the course of the past twelve months, we've shared 72 incredible books by new and established female authors we think deserved a permanent spot on your shelf. As a very small, female-led team of passionate bookworms, we hope that over this year we've managed to put you onto a new favourite book, a new author, and more. We thank you again for supporting us, and here's to another year of fabulous books, lots of newness and exciting times ahead.
This month we’re bringing you three standout debuts, a new release by a celebrated author causing quite the stir in the literary world, a translated eerie read inspired by a real-life true crime, a witty story about a woman praying to Monica Lewinsky, and and a book orbiting one woman’s transformation through the lens of three people.
Our Hardback Picks
Life of M by Rachel Cusk
A little while ago, I told the actor M that I was thinking of writing her autobiography. She liked the idea. She's a good sport. Would you just make it up? she said.
M is a film star, and one of the most recognisable faces of our time.
With such fame, her life has the appearance of freedom: people are instantly obliging, spaces are altered to accommodate her, time can be rearranged. For her, it seems, the rules of reality have melted away.
Now M has agreed to let a stranger write her biography. Their project will sprawl and expand: to the olive groves and holiday beaches where M spends her days; across hotel rooms, bourgeois facades, film sets; through endless modern cities. It is hard not to feel ugly next to M, hard not to feel insignificant. But what truths - about the very experience of living - might this proximity allow the writer to briefly capture? And what in the end will M make of their work?
In Life of M, Rachel Cusk has again fashioned a new kind of literature. A novel stripped of artifice, it takes our emptiness and fills it with grace.
Why we chose it: Life of M has been the book on everyone's lips in the lead up to its release, with speculation around its potential real-life inspiration dominating most of the conversation. For her thirteenth novel, Rachel Cusk is back doing what she does best - blurring the line between autobiography and fiction with her signature detached style, dissecting who we really are versus how we present ourselves to others. Cusk has long said she thinks character no longer exists in modern life, which makes the mystery of M even more fascinating.
Skin Contact by Elisa Faison
Unmoored by her mother's sudden death, Frances has never felt so diminished, or so old. She's painfully aware that strangers no longer look at her the same way - and that she's now, at thirty-two, older than the great aunt for whom she was named, who was killed in the seventies under mysterious circumstances involving an extramarital affair.
Her husband, Ben, will do anything to help Frances regain her vivacity and sense of purpose. So when Frances suggests that they open their marriage, Ben complies.
Over the next two years, they explore their sexualities and latent kinks; they navigate jealousy, betrayal, desire, and obsession; they defend their choices - and their new identities - to confused friends. They do all of this together, as a team. But when Ben finds himself falling in love with another woman, just as Frances realizes she's ready to settle down and have a baby, they are forced to confront the consequences of their experiment.
Why we chose it: Skin Contact was dubbed ‘the hottest, sluttiest book of the summer’ and we wholeheartedly agree with that statement. A debut novel by an exciting new talent, Faison digs deep into female desire, monogamy, sex and motherhood making this a book beyond just open marriage and polyamory. We enjoy reading something that dives into these subjects via a different lens, and this does just that. It’s sexy, provocative and beautifully written with so much depth and plenty of discussion to be had afterwards.
Death Do Us by Ruthy Mason
Bea has just got engaged. It should be the most exciting time of her life, but she can't shake the feeling that something is wrong.
Her engagement ring doesn't fit - her finger is swollen and painful. As she begins to look at dresses and venues, she notices her skin is flaking and her hair is beginning to thin. Nor can she shake the memories of a previous proposal from her ex-boyfriend a decade earlier.
Back then, she was resistant to commitment, young, confident, with her whole life ahead of her. If she ever were to marry, she'd always imagined breaking with tradition - an elopement, a brightly-coloured outfit, an open marriage. But as plans for the big day solidify, Bea begins to see the appeal of a big white dress, a huge reception, and a life with just one man.
Yet the engagement ring is getting tighter and tighter. Something is crawling under her skin. Someone is watching them from the shadows
Why we chose it: This brilliant debut offers a bold, witty take on marriage and what it means for women today through body horror. One for lovers of 'weird girl lit,' you can really feel the unease creeping in. It's an interesting angle to explore the societal expectation and pressure that settling down is the "right" path to choose through Bea's visceral and gory body changes. It also pokes fun at how over the top and commercialised the wedding industry has become. We had so much fun with this one, but be prepared for some gross scenes!
Our Paperback Picks
Dear Monica Lewinsky by Julia Langbein
Forty-five-year old Jean Dornan cannot escape the shadow of something that happened several decades ago. During a study abroad program in France she had a deeply inappropriate relationship with her professor. When the professor contacts her out of the blue to invite her to his retirement ceremony, she is jolted out of her malaise and filled with the need to understand why the affair derailed her life.
Rereading her old diaries, she is shocked to realise her relationship with the professor occurred during the summer of the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky scandal, yet she never saw the parallels. In a frenzy of guilt and regret, she finds herself praying to Monica Lewinsky—as if she were some kind of secular saint, the patron of persecuted and demonised women, perhaps?—and begging Monica’s forgiveness for not understanding everything they had in common. To her shock, Saint Monica appears to her and leads her back in time to reassess what happened. Had Jean merely been weak, stupid, and blind, as she has told herself for years? What was it about her that led to the affair? What did she really do that summer?
Told in flashbacks of those six weeks that changed Jean's life, interspersed with irreverent accounts of real female martyrs and visitations from Saint Monica, Dear Monica Lewinsky is a tender, hilarious, and thought-provoking examination of desire and how it shapes us. It is also a timely examination of what grace and forgiveness look like, in our lives and throughout history.
Why we chose it: Praying to thee Monica Lewinsky serving as a saint sounds rather gimmicky, but this book is so far from it. We liked how the author explored Jean's own contradictions in judgement, and how easy it is to condemn others while failing to see the same in ourselves. The addition of the stories from female saints and martyrs, with Monica Lewinsky front and centre, felt like a unique way of showcasing the long history of women being judged for their sexuality and choices. It’s witty, thought-provoking and one we couldn’t put down.
People like them by Samira Sedira, translated from French by Lara Vergnaud
Anna and Constant Guillot live with their two daughters in the peaceful, remote mountain village of Carmac, largely deaf to the upheavals of the outside world. Everyone in Carmac knows each other, and most of its residents look alike--until Bakary and Sylvia Langlois arrive with their three children.
Wealthy and flashy, the family of five are outsiders in the small town, their impressive chalet and three expensive cars a stark contrast to the modesty of those of their neighbors. Despite their differences, the Langlois and the Guillots form an uneasy, ambiguous friendship. But when both families begin experiencing financial troubles, the underlying class and racial tensions of their relationship come to a breaking point, and the unthinkable happens.
Why we chose it: In the author's note at the end, we learn that People Like Them (originally Des Gens comme Eux) draws on a real 2003 case: where a man in a Haute-Savoie village murdered a family of five. This is a masterclass on how to write a claustrophobic atmosphere. The tension escalates page by page until it boils over, asking an unsettling question: how could a seemingly ordinary person commit the most extraordinary crime? And how could those closest to him ever come to terms with what he'd done?
Chrysalis by Anna Metcalfe
She is noticed by Elliot as he trains in the gym. He sees her dedication to building her body and taking up space, and he is drawn to her strength. She is observed by her mother, as she grows from a taciturn, tremulous child into a determined and distant woman, who severs all familial ties. She is watched by her former colleague Susie, who offers her sanctuary and support as she leaves her partner and rebuilds her life, transforming her body and reinventing herself online. Each of these three witnesses desires closeness. Each is left with only the husk of the person they thought they knew, before she became someone else: a woman on a singular and solitary path with the power to inspire and to influence her followers, for good and ill.
Why we chose it: We read this back in 2023, and it’s one of those books that has stuck in our head. Metcalfe has mentioned she took inspiration from Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, another much loved book at Well Read Women HQ. It’s fresh, well crafted and we found peering into one woman’s transformation through the lens of three different people fascinating.It is a take on female self-reinvention and body image through the booming wellness culture and the carefully curated lives people show on social media. Is her transformation empowering? Or does it border on narcissism? By the end you'll have formed your own opinion of this weirdly compelling character.
Thanks for reading. We hope you love this month's picks as much as we do. If you still can't decide, we have our One Page In feature on Substack, and our wonderful quiz on our homepage.