Six books about nonconformist women

Lissa Evans has written books for both adults and children, including Their Finest Hour and a Half, which was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Crooked Heart was also longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly known as the Orange Prize); it is her first novel to be published in the US. Evans lives in London with her family.

At LitHub she tagged six novels from other eras that "feature women (and in one case a small girl) from other eras who don’t do what they’re supposed to do," including:

Anita and Me, Meera Syal

Semi-autobiographical, and set at the start of the 1970s, this novel is narrated by nine-year-old Meena, daughter of Punjabi immigrants, and the only non-white child in a working-class village in the industrial English Midlands. She is perceptive and critical, not only of the narrow lives and prejudices of her neighbours, but of the eccentricities of her own, highly-educated parents. Caught between two cultures, and with no one to follow, she squares her shoulders and chooses a route of her own. The author is not just a superb writer, but an actor and comedian, and the book is shot through with her sharp wit.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue