Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Ten top boundary-breaking women of fiction

Louisa Treger has worked as a classical violinist. She studied at the Royal College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and worked as a freelance orchestral player and teacher. Treger subsequently turned to literature, gaining a First Class degree and a Ph.D. in English at University College London, where she focused on early 20th century women’s writing and was awarded the West Scholarship and the Rosa Morison Scholarship “for distinguished work in the study of English Language and Literature.” The Lodger was published in 2014, The Dragon Lady in 2019 and she is currently working on her third novel.

At CrimeReads Treger tagged ten "strong women who refused to conform and who struggled to find their place in the world," including:
Smilla from Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg

Smilla is a bundle of contradictions. She lives in low-rent public housing, yet she dresses expensively. She seems emotionally self-sufficient, yet she falls in love and it terrifies her. She is beautiful and petite, yet she is capable of surprising violence against stronger opponents. The daughter of a wealthy Danish physician and an Inuit hunter, she doesn’t fit in anywhere.

Smilla realizes that the suspicious death of Isiah, the Greenlandic boy she looks after, is only the tip of an iceberg of violent crime. Armed with nothing but her intelligence, her courage, and her two special gifts—her almost psychic understanding of snow and ice, and her perfect sense of direction – she gets to the heart of the mystery, putting herself in mortal danger, and keeping her promise to Isiah “not to leave him in the lurch, never, not even now.”
Read about the other entries on the list.

Smilla's Sense of Snow is among Amber Tamblyn's six favorite books, Charlie Jane Anders's ten great books you didn't know were science fiction or fantasy, Elizabeth Hand's six favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue