Six titles featuring dark anti-heroines

Susie Yang was born in China and came to the United States as a child. After receiving her doctorate of pharmacy from Rutgers, she launched a tech startup in San Francisco that has taught 20,000 people how to code. She has studied creative writing at Tin House and Sackett Street. She has lived across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and now resides in the UK. White Ivy is her first novel.

At CrimeReads, Yang tagged six books featuring dark anti-heroines who test the limits of morality, including:

Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout is one of the most humane, astute writers I’ve read, and Olive Kitteridge is a testament to her ability to make a

cranky, mean, utterly un-self-aware old woman not only compelling, but sympathetic. As readers, we can hate Olive but she is trapped in her own mind and body and that is infinitely worse. This book took me on a roller-coaster of emotions, from sorrow to anger to disgust to pity. Olive could have been an aunt of mine whose tactless actions and bullying words I deplore, but in the small moments of silence and reflection and loneliness, I felt Olive’s confusion and grief. In some ways, I think all of us have a bit of Olive in us. It’s a beautiful, beautiful book.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Olive Kitteridge is among Sara Collins's six favorite bad women in fiction, Laura Barnett's ten top unconventional love stories, and Sophie Ward's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue