I read a lot of contemporary fiction by women and would like to have a shift. I want to read fiction by men, but written from a woman’s perspective. I have read Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn and The Testament of Mary, so I would prefer if you don’t mention him because I’m enthusiastic about his work already.
Okwudili Nebeolisa

Lara Feigel is the author of Free Woman: Life, Liberation and Doris Lessing
The men I immediately think of who write women well are Tolstoy and Henry James. Anna Karenina and Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady are both female characters who have taken on the status of real women, in my mind, and it’s worth spending time with them if you haven’t already. If you find Isabel Archer compelling, then the great news is that John Banville has given her another lease of life in Mrs Osmond, and she’s as alive as ever, because he’s another male novelist who writes women brilliantly, though his narrators are usually male.

Moving on through the decades, I think DH Lawrence (Women in Love) and John Updike (Rabbit Redux) are both underrated for their writing of women – and are certainly worth thinking about, even if you find them maddening. As for contemporary fiction, how about William Boyd or Sebastian Barry, who have both written from a female perspective as regularly as Tóibín has, or Ian McEwan in Atonement, or perhaps most of all, Graham Swift. Jane Fairchild in Swift’s Mothering Sunday is a remarkable achievement, fully embodied.

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