Meg Wolitzer takes issue with the term “women’s fiction.” In a 2013 interview with Chatelaine, she spoke on the paradox of wanting the label to disappear, while also believing that fiction by women deserves far more attention. It’s a fitting position for a writer who’s spent her career examining the lives, ambitions, relationships, and compromises of women — and who grew up with a novelist for a mother.
Born in Brooklyn in 1959, Wolitzer studied creative writing at Smith College before transferring to Brown, where she wrote her first book, Sleepwalking, about three female college students obsessed with poetry and death. It was published in 1982, when she was 23. Since then, Wolitzer has penned over a dozen novels — including The Wife, The Ten-Year Nap, The Uncoupling, The Interestings, and The Female Persuasion — while also teaching creative writing at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, Skidmore College, and Stony Brook Southampton.
When Chatelaine asked Wolitzer to share her favorite books by women, she chose five titles spanning more than a century — from Virginia Woolf to Donna Tartt — that offer a glimpse into the literary tradition that has shaped her. Her comments reveal what she values in great fiction: its ability to change as we do, make familiar places feel new again, and pull us back into worlds we thought we’d left behind.
Returning to To the Lighthouse, she found new meaning in its “Time Passes” section because, of course, time had passed; The House of Mirth “startled” her with the freshness of its 1905 New York; Old Filth won her over despite its title; Munro’s stories became “small, heartbreaking paragons of the form”; and The Secret History left her “seduced back to college age.” Taken together, the selections reflect Wolitzer’s enduring interest in the complicated inner lives of women — and in writers who can make those private experiences feel enormous.
Check out Meg Wolitzer’s best books by women below, and complement with Elena Ferrante’s female-penned favorites.
Meg Wolitzer’s Reading List
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (also rec’d by Alison Bechdel, Doris Lessing, Greta Gerwig, Lois Lowry, Ocean Vuong, Rachel Cusk & Richard E. Grant)
“Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece (well, one of them), which contains a section called ‘Time Passes,’ seemed to have a completely different feel to it when I read it recently, than it had had when I read it as a much younger person. And that was because, of course, time had passed. This is a lyrical, difficult and highly rewarding book that I am sure will have yet another feel to it when I read it again in a few years.” -MW
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (also rec’d by Chelsea Handler)
“As a New York resident, I was startled by the freshness of Edith Wharton’s 1905 look at my city. Taking on topics such as class, money, love, and convention, Wharton has written a big, meaty book that is as relevant as it is absorbing.” -MW
Old Filth by Jane Gardam (also rec’d by Ann Patchett)
“The title had put me off this British novel for a long time, but the drumbeat of friends saying ‘Read it’ got louder and louder. Which is how I found myself lost in the surprising world of an old barrister’s picaresque life, one that is both hilarious and hauntingly sad.” -MW
Selected Stories by Alice Munro
“I know that a lot of people are jumping on the Nobel bandwagon right now, naming Munro to many of this year’s ‘best of’ lists – but honestly, that’s where she belongs. Her work is resonant, and sticks in your mind; many of her stories are small, heartbreaking paragons of the form. Who else can write like this?” -MW
The Secret History by Donna Tartt (also rec’d by Tana French)
“When I first read this back when it was published, I couldn’t put it down. And now, when I so much as glance at the spine of the copy on my shelf, I feel seduced back to college age – excited, self-conscious, waking up to life.” -MW
(via Chatelaine; photo by Leon Harris)
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