Five of the best books about badass madwomen

Jennifer Cody Epstein is the author of four novels that have been published in a total of twenty-one countries around the world: The Madwomen of Paris (2023), Wunderland (2019), The Gods of Heavenly Punishment (2012), and The Painter from Shanghai (2007).

[The Page 69 Test: The Painter from Shanghai; The Page 69 Test: The Gods of Heavenly Punishment; Writers Read: Jennifer Cody Epstein (May 2019); The Page 69 Test: Wunderland; Q&A with Jennifer Cody Epstein; The Page 69 Test: The Madwomen of Paris; My Book, The Movie: The Madwomen of Paris]

She is the recipient of the 2014 Asia Pacific American Librarians Association Honor Award for fiction, and was longlisted for the 2020 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize.

At Shepherd Epstein tagged five of her favorite books about badass madwomen. One title on the list:

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

For me, this is another masterful interweaving of historical fact and wildly creative imagination. It’s a prime example of in-depth research wielded to tangibly ground the reader in the book’s world; you learn about everything from 19th-century psychological theory and forensics to quilt-making and housecleaning techniques.

Part of what I really love about the novel, though, is that unlike in The Handmaid’s Tale, here Atwood deliberately blurs the lines between “good” and “evil” and “victim” and “villain.” Grace isn’t entirely likable, and she’s pretty much entirely unreliable. So, embodying her perspective as a reader is a continual guessing game of whether or not she’s telling the truth about her role in the murders at the book’s center. At the same time, it’s also a kind of ethical guessing game, for even if Grace is guilty, Atwood makes the role society and class play in her downfall so painfully clear that you can’t help wondering if you’d do the same in her situation.

Read about another entry on the list.

Alias Grace is among Shelley Blanton-Stroud's five difficult women in historical fiction, Paraic O'Donnell's seven top contemporary novels about the Victorian era, L.S. Hilton's top ten female-fronted thrillers, Rebecca Jane Stokes's top seven books for fans of Orange Is The New Black and Tracy Chevalier's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue