Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, the global success of the billion-dollar blockbuster Barbie and Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore album GUTS – it certainly has been a year for the girls. A year of attentive reflection and the eager celebration of girlhood. 

 

            On the surface, girlhood is coming of age. Girlhood is sequins, ribbons and dolls. Girlhood is lush hair and manicures. It’s my crinkled Hello Kitty marionette.

 

            Yet beneath its exterior, every woman understands the defining essence of girlhood that contributes to the identity we resume as women – ripped stockings, struggle, smeared lipstick, resistance, scrapes from tree-climbing, stinging knees from abrasive nettles, reverberating laughter amid serious affairs, the secrets we keep in the dark, the carmine fires of our heartbeats aflame, the prayers we thrust upon the world when we believe nobody is listening; aching for a sign. This is what immediately comes to mind when delving into the idea of girlhood – and it is such a special moment when encapsulated to perfection in literature. 

 

            Thus among the faultless novels I have devoured in 2023, the below recommendations are ones I would advance to anyone who feels that they miss the nostalgia (and anguish) that accompanies being a young girl.    

 

 

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

            Ferrante captures the true essence of girlhood in a manner I never thought was possible. This novel is the first volume in a four-part series of novels, commonly referred to as the Neapolitan Novels. Originally written in Italian, and translated into English (among other languages), the modern masterpiece follows a childhood friendship between two girls, Elena and Lila, growing up in a poor Neapolitan neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples in the 1950s. It closely recounts the mundane details of their relationship. The characters grow up together, navigating through childhood, all the while maintaining a complex, and often conflicted friendship. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two girls that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship, describing the story of a neighbourhood as it is transformed in ways which simultaneously transform the relationship between her two protagonists.

 

Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

            Give Mellors’ addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel all of her flowers. Cleopatra and Frankenstein is definitely a character-driven book rather than one with a fast-paced plot, focusing on the seismic waves of destruction caused by an impulsive marriage. A young British student is still establishing herself in the sleepless city of New York, following her swift escape from London, when Cleo stumbles upon Frank – an American man twenty years older and brimming with success, his life is full of all the excesses Cleo’s lack. We follow the pair as they hasten onto the course of an impulsive marriage, as Cleo’s student visa is expiring. On a journey of acquainting ourselves with Cleo, we come to learn of all of her emotional scars from her childhood and a lack of solid parenting that leaves her ungrounded. As hilarious as it is gut-wrenching, and entertaining as it is deeply moving, nothing prepares the reader as they grapple with the trials of marriage and mental illness as the marriage slowly tips between surviving and descending in flames. 

 

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

            Perhaps the most popular book of recent times that is on the list, Moshfegh illustrates a young woman’s efforts to embark on an extended hibernation, a task of sleeping through an entire year straight in an attempt to avoid the excruciating realities of the world. The protagonist has it all – youth, beauty and wealth; yet there still resides a vacuous hole in her heart. Under the influence of a dangerous combination of drugs, the unnamed narrator alienates herself from the world; aching to escape the death of her parents, toxic relationships and sadistic friendship. It is a tale about vanishing to avoid the confrontation of actuality – if there is anything girls can identify with, that certainly checks the box. 

 

My Body by Emily Ratajkowski

            In all honesty, I was pretty indifferent to American supermodel and actress Emily Ratajkowski until I read the most empowering book of my 2023 so far. The only non-fiction to make the list, Ratajkowski honestly investigates the corruption of the modelling industry, the grey area between consent and abuse and what it means to be a woman – and a commodity. With personal anecdotes from early in her career, I was left distressed about how little worth women still have in society to certain men, in this day and age, and it left me longing for girlhood, when perhaps our minds were free from the burden of such notions.

 

Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney

            The Irish sensation Sally Rooney went three for three with the release of her stellar third novel. The novel’s structure is described as a ‘’love quadrangle’’, with themes of romance, friendship, precarity and social class at its core. We meet college best friends Alice and Eileen, who are attached at the hip – until graduation. As life moves on, the girls move on with it. Letters to and from each woman to the other feature as central to the novel, as the pair attempt to stay in touch through updates and personal anecdotes. Yet as they both attempt to find love and establish careers, a distance that is emotional, just as much as it is physical, begins to form – perhaps irreversible forever. Any woman who has ever undergone the steady yet indomitable separation from a best friend will be torn by Sally’s genius in this novel.

 

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

            Five young sisters who grow up together and are worshipped by the boys in their neighbourhood for their beauty all commit suicide, as (shocker!), sometimes praise and validation are still not enough. A novel so poignant and moving, that Eugenides became the sole exception to female authors only on this list.

 

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

            Kawakami’s writing left an unexpected pit in my stomach as I progressed through her gut-wrenching prose. Despite being originally published fifteen years ago, the Japanese novel is split into two parts, and touches on themes that are more relevant for women than ever before, including breast-enhancement surgery (hence breasts) and the difficulties of conception and finding a donor or carrying out an in-vitro fertilisation treatment (hence eggs). In the first half, Kawakami discusses the insecurities that women carry and hold close to them for an entire lifetime; one that society makes difficult to shake, and shameful to change. Meanwhile, there are daughter and mother rifts and separation that occur throughout. The second part details the difficulties of adoption and receiving a sperm donor as a single mother. Every single woman would feel identified every time a page is turned, and definitely eagerly miss the innocence of childhood, along with their mother. 

 

            No matter what the concept of girlhood represents to you, I can guarantee that there won’t be a dry eye after becoming acquainted with any of the above pieces of contemporary and literary fiction– and perhaps reacquainted with the part of your inner self that is still in touch with that little girl you once were; and will reside inside you forever, the same little girl, but perhaps less pure, as she ages and becomes tainted by all of the harsh realities the world has to offer.

 

WORDS: Alice Matty