Seven titles about women committing acts of violence

A queer writer and Irish-American dual citizen, Francesca McDonnell Capossela grew up in New York City and holds an M. Phil from Trinity College Dublin. Her publication credits include the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Point Magazine, Banshee, Columbia Journal, Guesthouse (forthcoming), and two anthologies: Dark Matter Presents: Human Monsters (2022) and Teaching Nabokov’s Lolita in the #MeToo Era (2021).

Her first novel, Trouble the Living, is out now. She lives in Brooklyn with her dog, Lyra.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven books "in which women have twisted desires or commit acts of vengeance in the name of some greater cause. These are books that flip the paradigm we’ve learned—bad man, battered woman—on its head, and show women as devastatingly powerful and wonderfully, frighteningly violent." One title on the list:

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

It’s hard to fully express the ingenuity of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead without spoiling anything. The novel follows an elderly woman living alone in a rural Polish town and a string of strange murders. Filled with allusions to Blake (like the title), tongue-in-cheek astrological interpretations, and a deep love for animals—especially the narrator’s dog—the book would be delightful even without the final, delicious twist. Ultimately, this is a book about how we treat each other and what we each deserve. And, of course, it’s a book about what women are capable of, how they exert autonomy, how they are seen by their neighbors, and what darkness lives inside them.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue