I'd suggest Margaret Atwood'd Cat's Eye [link] which is a fucking great book. Or Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons, [link] which is slighter, but a good read.
We killed a homeless man on this bench. Me and Dru. Those were good times. You know, he begged for mercy, and you know, that only made her bite harder.
Spike ,'Sleeper'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Scrappy - Nov 01, 2007 1:25:38 pm PDT #4236 of 28239
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
Jars - Nov 01, 2007 1:46:15 pm PDT #4237 of 28239
The Wide Sargasso Sea? Although I don't know if that's feminist so much as postmodern...
Ginger - Nov 01, 2007 2:48:09 pm PDT #4238 of 28239
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda
The Awakening by Kate Chopin is a classic feminist work, although certainly not cheery. For something different, there's Louisa May Alcott's Work, which is a semi-biographical adult novel that talks about the difficulties women had trying to make a living. Another possibility is Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night, which focuses on the choices women have to make.
Connie Neil - Nov 01, 2007 4:22:08 pm PDT #4239 of 28239
brillig
Another possibility is Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night, which focuses on the choices women have to make.
One thing to keep in mind with Gaudy Night is that it is very much a product of its time. I have a hard time reading it because of some of the assumptions that are made.
Ginger - Nov 01, 2007 4:56:44 pm PDT #4240 of 28239
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda
I think those assumptions are things you can talk about in terms of feminism. The basic questions haven't changed: Do we choose the life of the mind or of the heart? Do marriage and children limit what women can accomplish? Do men have to make the same choices?
Strix - Nov 01, 2007 5:34:17 pm PDT #4241 of 28239
A dress should be tight enough to show you're a woman but loose enough to flee from zombies. — Ginger
I have to second Cat's Eye. It is dead spot-on about girls and how they treat each other, and has some fabulous observation about women and how they are perceived by each other and by society.
It's really all about women and how they treat other women. Oh, and some stuff about art and how men see women. It's a novel I consistently re-read.
-t - Nov 01, 2007 5:40:47 pm PDT #4242 of 28239
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration
I pretty much love all Margaret Atwood's stuff because it makes me all thinky, and Cat's Eye is the one that randomly pops into my head with someting new to think about the most. Should make for excellent discussion.
Amy - Nov 01, 2007 5:42:10 pm PDT #4243 of 28239
Because books.
I haven't read Cat's Eye in years. Maybe it's time to dig it out again.
hippocampus - Nov 02, 2007 3:08:38 am PDT #4244 of 28239
not your mom's socks.
erikaj - second Margaret Atwood & depending on your group's disposition, add either Handmaid's Tale or The Blind Assasin
There is a utopian called Herland, I think - not sure if it's been mentioned?
And Mary Wollstonecraft, George Elliot, and (arguably-not so arguably) Jane Austen, if you're headed in that direction.
Liese - speaking of female cyberpunk characters that don't come from traumatic backgrounds - America Shaftoe (Cryptonomicron, Y.T and Juanita Marquez (both Snowcrash), and Miranda (Diamond Age).
Sue - Nov 02, 2007 3:16:11 am PDT #4245 of 28239
hip deep in pie
I'll suggest The Company Parade by Storm Jameson, which is a novel set between the wars in Britain. The main Character is a woman who leaves her husband and child in the country to come to London to become a writer. It's part of a trilogy, and I really became engrossed in that world.
Also, totally on the other end of the spectrum is The Passion According to GH, by Clarice Lispector. Lispector was a Brazilian writer in the 1960's and 70's. The plot of this novel is "woman kills a cockroach". It's been described as what Kafka would have written if he was a woman.