12 Books That Totally Get Female Friendship

Friendships are rich territory for fiction and my personal thematic catnip. If I read a book jacket that says the word friendship, particularly if it’s got a female protagonist, I’m already halfway to loving the book. Next time you’re feeling nostalgic for your childhood BFF or that girl you adored in high school, or you just feel like falling into the story of two women not unlike you and your future maid of honor, check out these titles. They each capture the essence of friendships at different life stages.

CHILDHOOD

As a kid, I once built a fort with my neighbor in her backyard where we reigned over a menagerie of stuffed animals. I don’t remember what we called our kingdom, but it wasn’t much different from Terabithia, the imaginary sanctuary two friends create in Katherine Paterson’s incomparable novel The Bridge to Terabithia. Like Jesse and Leslie, my friend and I slipped in and out of the game whenever we felt like it — essentially, we lived halfway in an imaginary kingdom. The Bridge to Terabithia has one of the saddest endings I can think of, but the story also evokes that giddy, anything-is-possible-when-I’m-with-you feeling so well you’ll be glad, even while you’re sobbing hysterically, that you read it.

PRETEEN

In L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series, Anne and Diana coin the phrase “bosom friends” to describe their relationship. (Which honestly kind of weirded me out when I was a preteen and embarrassed by any word that correlated to a body part.) Their early devotion will be familiar to anyone who spent every weekend sleeping over at her best friend’s house.

“I’ll never have another bosom friend — I don't want to have. I couldn't love anybody as I love you.”

“Oh Diana,” cried Anne, clasping her hands, “do you love me?”

“Why, of course I do. Didn’t you know that?” 

In many ways, your preteen best friend is also your first love — there’s courtship and a promise (often including an exchange of jewelry!), though BFFs have a way better chance of lasting forever. 

ADOLESCENCE

I could write a whole post on all the awesome books about teenage friendship. But I want to spotlight My Brilliant Friend, by reclusive Italian novelist Elena Ferrante. The story is set in a small Italian village outside Naples, and it follows Lila and Elena from the beginnings of their friendship — playing with dolls, competing at school, terrifying each other with stories about neighborhood villains — to their late teen years, when their paths diverge. Though they’re both accepted into upper school, Lila can’t afford to go. She grows beautiful while working at her father’s cobbling business, her potential thwarted. Elena, meanwhile, suffers an awkward adolescence and is both tormented and inspired by her friend’s beauty and unquenchable intelligence. Ferrante captures the delicate blend of envy and loyalty that afflicts girls who see in each other everything they are not, and who, despite it all, share a fierce love.

HIGH SCHOOL

I’ve made high school a separate category from adolescence not just so I can include more worthy books, but also because high school can act as a kind of poison on even the closest friendships. In short, girls can be bitches, and if you didn’t learn that in grade school, there’s not a chance you’re getting out of high school without knowing that even the people you trust the most will occasionally stab you in the back. Megan Abbott’s Dare Me is the magnetic story of what happens to Addy and Beth’s friendship when the cheerleading squad they’re used to running gets a new coach. Abbott understands girls — she gets their sweetness, their complexity, and their ability to be completely vicious.

COLLEGE

Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl opens with a rift between twin sisters Cath and Wren after Wren decides not to be Cath’s roommate their freshman year of college. The story of how these sisters (and lifelong BFFs) separate and then come together again is moving and authentic. Plus, Fangirl has extra bonus girl-friendship action — the scenes in which Cath befriends her new roommate, the caustic and LOL-funny Reagan, are as entertaining as they are recognizable.

20s

Mary McCarthy’s The Group scandalized the world when it was published in the early ‘60s with its frank take on sex, marriage, breastfeeding and the horrors of early birth control (oh my god, you guys, PESSARIES). Cosmopolitan called it, “Juicy, shocking, witty and almost continually brilliant,” in one of its earliest reviews. The “group” is composed of eight Vassar grads tackling post-college life, and the novel weaves in and out of individual stories, so that the effect is a kind of collage. You see each girl through her own eyes and the group’s eyes, a narrative trick that underscores the permanent way college friends influence our identity. If The Group leaves you hankering for more, follow it up with J. Courtney Sullivan’s Commencement, a contemporary take on the same theme — except instead of Vassar, Sullivan’s “group” graduated from Smith.

There’s a scene in Emily Gould’s forthcoming novel, Friendship, that’s a straight-up echo of Anne and Diana’s pledge in Anne of Green Gables — except Gould’s take has a decidedly Girls-esque spin. Twentysomething Bev and Amy are sitting on the fire escape of Amy’s new apartment, drinking wine from paper cups, when Bev confesses that Amy is her “best friend.” The awkward tenderness of that moment, which will resonate with any girl who’s experienced the adult version of friend-courtship, sets the tone for this insightful book about female relationships and how they change as women approach their 30s.

30s

Recently I’ve noticed a lot of my girlfriends talking about “cutting the fat” — severing their ties to friends, even close friends, because they no longer have anything in common with them, or because the friendship has grown toxic. Lucinda Rosenfeld is a biting novelist, and with I’m So Happy for You she shows what happens when friendship turns sour. Wendy is used to helping her longtime BFF Daphne clean up the crazy messes she makes of her life. But when Daphne starts to get her act together, Wendy can’t handle it and sets off on a destructive bender that threatens to tear them apart.

If cattiness isn't your bag, counter the bleakness with Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be?. This book has been classified as a fictional memoir, because it’s partially composed of real-life gchats and email exchanges between Heti and her BFF, Margaux Williamson, a visual artist. Though Heti’s novel tackles a ton of complicated and personal terrain — her shitty relationships with men, her artistic dreams and failures — it is, above all, a vivid and modern portrait of two women friends. Williamson and Heti aren't just inseparable in normal BFF ways — they’re artists who share a passionate ambition for greatness in their respective fields.

MARRIAGE

The when of the marriage is less important than the who, and when I imagine my wedding, it’s my bridal party that I think of first. Why is it that marriage makes us want to reconnect with our closest girlfriends, even the ones we haven’t spoken to in years? In Judy Blume’s Summer Sister, Vix is the quiet, bookish sidekick to Caitlin’s dazzling firework of a personality, and the novel trails them through their summers together on Martha’s Vineyard. Years after they’ve grown apart, Caitlin asks Vix to be her maid of honor — and Vix says yes, even though she has a secret history with her friend’s fiancé. You’ll be riveted as both girls learn the extent of their capacity for betrayal and devotion.

FOREVER AND EVER

You’ve probably seen the AMAZING movie version of Beaches, starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey. (If you haven’t, now you have Friday-night plans — order a pizza, call your best friend, and get nice and wine drunk while you guys scream-sing “The Wind Beneath Your Wings.”) The novel is even better. The story of Cee Cee and Bertie's friendship, which spans 30 years of love affairs and jealousy, of closeness and distance, is a moving portrait of lifelong friendship. You already knew best friends can weather ups and downs, but Beaches is the perfect (and tear-jerky) reminder.  

Related: 

10 Books by Women You Have to Read This Spring

10 Things Books Taught Me About Relationships

8 Reasons Guys Who Read Make the Best Boyfriends

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The Best Books for Your '90s Birth Year

Are you an introspective, renegade thinker with a taste for alternative music and a tendency toward the blues? Be careful — you might be the hero of one of these '90s books.

After we published our recommendations by '80s birth year, many readers requested a '90s list as well. Not a problem! Again, I left off no-brainers like Harry Potter and Girl, Interrupted, because I figure the books and movies are pretty much a rite of passage, and focused on the books you may not have read — or at least haven’t read in a while.

The biggest '90s fictional trend? The outsider. From High Fidelity to The Perks of Being a Wallflower, '90s literature proves that nothing is cooler than dancing to the beat of your own homemade musical instrument.

1990

Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
I didn’t get around to reading Jurassic Park (or seeing the movie) until I was an adult, which is a major bummer — I have no doubt my 16-year-old self would have loved Crichton’s Frankenstein-by-way-of-dinosaurs story of what happens when scientists play god.

Possession, A.S. Byatt
Somehow, A.S. Byatt makes a slow-moving love affair between academics chasing a paper trail sigh-out-loud sexy. As two glasses-clad professors unearth more evidence about a romantic relationship between two very dead and very famous Victorian poets, their own love affair flourishes. It’s a heady, intellectual read, and A.S. Byatt is proof that satisfying romance can be brainy.

The Witching Hour, Anne Rice
Because who doesn’t love 1,000-plus page novels about witches? The Witching Hour is the first book in Rice’s Mayfair Witches series, a three-book sequence that follows the rise and fall of the wealthy Mayfair witch dynasty. Set in atmospheric turn-of-the-century New Orleans, this steamy read feels much shorter than it weighs.

1991

Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
Instead of underfunded and marginally successful D.A.R.E. (Drugs and Alcohol Resistance Education) programs, public schools should consider forcing teenagers to read Irvine Welsh’s stomach-turning collection of stories starring heroin junkies in Edinburgh, Scotland. There’s nothing glamorous about the drugs in Trainspotting, or the people who use them — these portraits of addiction and its aftermath are more upsetting than the most graphic episode of Intervention you’ve ever seen. Trainspotting is practically a horror story, with immense literary and sociopolitical value.

Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaardner
Can you think of a better vessel for a comprehensive survey of Western philosophy than an angsty teenage girl with a semi-absent father? I can’t. After 14-year-old Sophie receives a letter that asks only “Who are you?” and “Where does the world come from?” she sets off on a Socratic expedition led by her (older, male) tutor. This philosophy tutorial dressed up like Alice in Wonderland is one of the most popular books to come out of Norway — it has sold more than a million copies and has even been adapted into a computer game.

1992

Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan
Terry McMillan was a household name in the late '80s and '90s. Waiting to Exhale follows four successful African-American women searching for love (or escaping the wreckage of it). Their funny, tender friendship is the book’s heart. By the time Waiting to Exhale was adapted into a tearjerker starring the breathtaking Whitney Houston, it had sold 3 million copies.

The Secret History, Donna Tartt
Donna Tartt’s newest novel, The Goldfinch, came out a few months ago and has made it onto every best-of list this year. (Ours too!) But The Secret History, Tartt’s first book, is the reason the whole world drops everything when she publishes a novel. Set on Hampden College’s elite campus, this murder mystery is less about piecing together the clues to find the villain than it is an exploration of how far people go to belong. Narrator Richard Papen is, of course, a compelling and obsessive outsider. Special bonus? Loads of Greek mythology. Just read it. I dare you to not like it.

Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison
Bone Boatwright, the illegitimate daughter of Anney Boatwright, starts her story by narrating the moments leading up to her birth, as if she alone is in control of her destiny. It’s an empowering declaration of Bone’s strength, especially considering the plot of her short life — over the course of this novel, she’ll be raped and beaten by her stepfather and will have to face her mother’s insufficiencies head-on. Yes, this is a difficult tale of a girl in difficult circumstances, but it’s also inspiring, funny, and just as important as Catcher and the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird — two more famous books it’s often compared to.

1993

The Giver, Lois Lowry
Though you probably read Lois Lowry’s dystopian young adult novel in middle school, it’s worth reading again as an adult. The story is set in a future world where adults have been stripped of memories of the past and every person acts as a cog in society’s well-oiled machine. While this eliminates hunger and certain kinds of pain, it also eradicates life’s beauty. The moment where Jonas sees the color red for the first time is so much more beautiful with a little life experience under your belt.

The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
Not even this travesty can keep me from being a bona fide Eugenides fangirl. Yeah, The Marriage Plot let me down — Cosmo writer Anna Breslaw sums up my feelings at The Hairpin — but that’s partly because The Virgin Suicidesis so good. The novel is narrated by a group of boys who are fascinated by their neighbors, the gorgeous Lisbon sisters, who commit suicide one by one. “On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide — it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese — the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the sleeping pills were, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope.”

1994

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
Murakami’s puzzle box of a novel is addictive and strange, the kind of writing that alters your dreams. It follows Toru Okada, a thirtysomething Japanese man whose life, on the surface, is as mundane as they come. But after the disappearance of Toru’s cat, increasingly odd things (which may or may not be real) begin to happen.

Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, Elizabeth Wurtzel
After Elizabeth Wurtzel published this memoir of her struggle with depression throughout college and young adulthood, she became the lit world’s Kate Moss. Prozac Nation is an early and influential look at the pharmaceutical treatment of depression. Wurtzel’s attempt to explain how an attractive, talented, privileged woman can also be very, very depressed is a '90s touchstone.

1995

Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
It’s pretty much impossible to sum up David Foster Wallace’s humungous, annotated novel in two or three sentences. Thankfully, the Internet is full of cultish fans who’ve made helpful study guides, like this diagram explaining the connections between characters, this Decemberists music video inspired by the fictional Enfield Tennis Academy (where part of the novel takes place), and this plot map. This tome is your birthright, 95-ers. Plus, if you get through it, you can claim eternal bragging rights for having read the closest thing to Joyce’s Ulysses written since, well, Joyce’s Ulysses.

The Golden Compass, His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
I’ve said this on the Internet before, so apologies for self-stealing, but I adored this book so much that I made a childhood vow to name my first daughter after Lyra Belacqua, the protagonist of the His Dark Materials trilogy. Lyra is a liar, fiercely independent and fiercely loyal, and she’s one of the most fully realized — and admirable — young adult heroines in literature.

High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby’s lovable novel about a record-store owner who revisits his five worst breakups after his girlfriend, Laura, leaves him, is an ode to the mixed tape as much as it’s an ode to love and heartbreak.

1996

Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
The first rule of reading Fight Club is stop thinking about Brad Pitt. The second rule is clear your schedule — once you start this short, kinetic book, you won’t stop reading until you’re done. Fight Club might be the one novel that every guy I’ve ever dated has unanimously read and loved.

Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt
My mom wouldn’t let me read Angela’s Ashes the year of its publication because I was 10 and because the memoir contains explicit sex, a scene in which Frank McCourt briefly contemplates intercourse with a sheep, and lots and lots of Irish alcoholism. So I waited until she left the house and then snuck the book from its hiding spot in her pajama drawer. All told, it probably took two months of my mom’s trips to the grocery store for me to finish the saga of McCourt’s gruesome childhood.

1997

Naked, David Sedaris
David Sedaris can make anything hilarious. This essay collection is as irreverent as they come (especially when addressing darker, sadder topics, like the death of Sedaris’s mother), and full of anecdotes from Sedaris’s weird childhood and drug-addled college years. So funny you won’t be able to stop yourself from reading sections to everyone you know.

Sex and the City, Candace Bushnell
If you’re like me and my girls, the SATC dynamic is such a profound part of your worldview that you subconsciously diagnose everyone you meet as a Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, or Samantha. Candace Bushnell’s anthology of New York Observer columns details the lives of her and her friends. These intimate snapshots are the birthplace of the four women who taught the world the power of BFFs. Why haven’t you read it yet?

Underworld, Don DeLillo
In 2006, Underworld was the runner-up for a New York Times survey that asked critics to vote on the best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years. It lost to Toni Morrison’s Beloved, which, yeah, fair enough. Underworld is a highly political novel, anchored by memorable depictions of historic figures like Lenny Bruce and J. Edgar Hoover.

1998

The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolano
This challenging book secured Chilean writer Roberto Bolano’s place on American bookshelves. This nonlinear narrative focuses on a group of poets and bohemians who make up an art movement called Visceral Realism. Don’t let that sentence fool you into thinking The Savage Detectives is a snooze. “There’s a time for reciting poems and a time for fists,” Bolano writes. “As far as I was concerned, this was the latter.”

Ghost World, Daniel Clowes
Recent high school graduates Enid Coleslaw (really) and Rebecca Doppelmeyer think they’re too smart for their boring town and are eager to hurl cynical judgments at everyone who crosses their path — from parents to service workers to old classmates. But you forgive them because this summer will be Becky and Enid’s last before they drift apart into adulthood and all the crap that comes with it. Ghost World, with its blue-toned illustrations, captures that on-the-precipice-of-growing-up feeling so well you’ll be walloped with nostalgia for your own lost summers — and that girlfriend you never talk to anymore.

1999

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
Charlie’s having a rough time. He’s just embarked on his freshman year of high school, his best friend, Michael, recently committed suicide, and he’s got an agonizing secret crush. The book is written as a letter to an unidentified person (I always like to think it’s Michael), and it’s as intimate as a note slid into your locker. Chbosky has said that The Perks of Being a Wallflower is for anyone who’s felt like an outcast. So basically everyone.

Vice: New & Selected Poems, Ai
Ai’s collection of dramatic monologues written as poems won the National Book Award for poetry in 1999. Ai proudly calls herself a mutt, and in tribute to her mixed heritage (Japanese, African-American, Comanche, to name a few), her poems are a cacophony of voices — all of them distinct and unforgettably real.

Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson
Miranda Sordino stops using her voice after she’s raped. “Shut your trap, button your lip, can it,” Anderson writes. “All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.” Miranda alienates herself from high school as she struggles to face what happened to her — and to work up the courage to speak the truth.

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The Best Books From Your '80s Birth Year

If you had the ability to go back in time, what would you use all that extra life for? I recently saw About Time (equal parts dumb and adorable) and found myself nodding when the movie’s patriarch explains how he used that time to read. The worst/best thing about books is that it’s so overwhelming to choose what to read over what not to read. By virtue of choosing, you automatically leave tons of great stuff out.

Thankfully, books live forever. So let’s do a little time travel of our own. I’ve revisited the teased-hair, shoulder-padded '80s, and selected a few knockout titles from each year that you may have missed. I intentionally bypassed some you’ve probably heard of — Philip Roth and Tom Wolfe need no love from me, and I can’t help that I don’t like Cormac McCarthy — or already read. This list is driven by my taste and the assumption that you and I, dear Cosmo reader, as children of the '80s, are not so different.

1980

Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson

Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, are raised by a series of relatives in the strange, semi-magical Fingerbone, Idaho. There are images in this novel that will never leave you — their house filling with water during a devastating flood, the ghostly train bridge, the autumn leaves worn to nets of veins. But the thing about Housekeeping that twists my heart hardest is how aptly it gets at the way people grow apart — in this case two sisters, who, despite all they share, will never truly see each other.

Satan Says, Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds is the poetic daughter of female confessional poets like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. This book, her first, was published when she was 37, and it launched her Pulitzer-winning career. I promise you’ve never read anything like these torrential rages: “I am trying to write my / way out of the closed box… / Satan comes to me… and says, I’ll get you out. Say / My father is a shit. I say / my father is a shit and Satan / laughs and says, It’s opening.”

I once went to hear Olds read, and afterward I asked her to sign my beat-up copy of Satan Says. She opened the book to the title page, drew a colon after the word SAYS, and added: “Cheers!” I’ve adored her all the more ever since. Olds helped make it possible for women to write about whatever the fuck they want.

The Clan of the Cave Bear, Earth’s Children, Jean M. Auel

As a 13-year-old, I dog-eared the sex scenes in my mom’s copies of each book in the Earth’s Children quartet (Auel’s up to six now), stunned and fascinated by detailed scenes of characters taking each other from behind. That aside, if you’re a fan of historical fiction, this epic set during the last years of Neanderthal civilization is as immersive as the genre gets. Willful, beautiful Ayla guides the reader through this world, and her exploits inject enough intrigue and romance to keep you invested in Auel’s explanations of Neanderthal linguistics and coming-of-age rituals.

Superfudge, Judy Blume

Because, duh. Nothing will bring back your childhood like revisiting Superfudge. Peter and his little brother, Fudge, anxiously await the arrival of their new baby sister, Tootsie. Blume nails fraught dynamic between close-in-age siblings. This is also the book that confirmed my worst suspicions about Santa.

1981

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

I checked this out from my high school library after class on a Tuesday night, started reading after dinner and didn’t stop until 6 a.m. the next morning when I turned the final page. The Unbearable Lightness of Being was my introduction to a lot of things: marriage and infidelity, the philosophical novel, Communism and what it meant for real people — namely, these beautiful, funny characters. I still remember Sabina, with her bowler hat and artist’s spirit and craving for unconventional sexual experiences, like she’s a person I met in another life.

The Heart of a Woman, Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou’s bestselling memoir opens a door into the beloved writer’s daily life during the years she struggled to raise her son and fight for civil rights in an America resistant to change. Angelou’s loving, particular eye renders black leaders like Billie Holiday and Malcolm X with a tenderness you won’t find in any other historical document, and the chapters on Angelou’s love affairs will give you a new appreciation for the poet and musician’s turbulent, fully lived life.

1982

The Color Purple, Alice Walker

I love the intimacy of epistolary novels, how after just a few pages you’re so wrapped up in the narrator’s voice that it becomes an extension of your thoughts. The Color Purple, which won the National Book Award for fiction the year of its publication and nabbed the Pulitzer in 1983, is structured as a series of letters from Celie to God and later, after Celie feels God has abandoned her, to her sister Nettie. The Color Purple isn’t just a portrait of a poor black woman in the American South during the '30s; it’s a portrait of male domination and violence over women and the power of our voices to change the world.

Different Seasons, Stephen King

This collection of four novellas is something of a departure from Stephen King’s horror novels. Though they’re all stamped with King’s trademark interest in the macabre, they’ll appeal to fans of literary fiction. Of the pieces collected in Different Seasons, three were made into major films; The Body was adapted into the iconic film Stand by Me; Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption was the basis for Academy Award Best Picture nominee The Shawshank Redemption and Apt Pupil was adapted into a film of the same name. The fourth novella, The Breathing Method, is just as good as the other three — a Poe-esque story within a story, featuring decapitation, birth and a hint of love.

1983

Heartburn, Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron’s first novel introduces the themes she focused on throughout her career in films like When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle. As you’d expect from Ephron, Heartburn is a compulsively readable look at the agonizing breakdown of a marriage. The obviously autobiographical story of Rachel and Mark’s spiral toward divorce will be of interest to Ephron fans eager for behind-the-scenes details of Ephron’s messy second marriage to Carl Bernstein.

Winter’s Tale, Mark Helprin

If you’ve been to the movies recently, you may have seen the trailer for the upcoming film adaptation of Winter’s Tale, starring Colin Farrell and that sweet-faced girl who is also the youngest daughter in Downton Abbey. The novel takes place in a mythic version of New York City, and it tells the story of Peter Lake’s love affair with consumptive and slowly perishing Beverly Penn. Helprin’s narrative spans time and space and is an intoxicating mixture of fantasy, sci-fi and historical romance. Think The NeverEnding Story meets Shakespeare with all the world-building goodness of The Golden Compass trilogy.

1984

White Noise, Don DeLillo

White Noise is the sensation of anxiety distilled into book form. Professor Jack Gladney lives with his fourth wife, Babette, in a middle-of-nowhere Midwestern town, and they are terrified of death. When their community is ordered to evacuate because of “The Airborne Toxic Event” that traps the town under a tarry black cloud of presumably poisonous fumes, Jack and Babette’s paranoia reaches new heights. Even DeLillo’s sentences have the pitchy, doom-addled quality of an impending panic attack.

Boy: Tales of Childhood, Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl published a ton of excellent books in the '80s — The Twits (1980), The BFG (1982), The Witches (1983), Matilda (1988) — and I highly recommend them all. But for me Boy is one of the writer’s best. Fans of Dahl’s fiction will uncover the seeds of his future stories in scenes from Dahl’s childhood. Boy is full of weird vignettes from Dahl’s youth: an automobile accident that severed off his nose except for a strand of flesh; Dahl warming the toilet seats for the prefects at his boarding school; and my favorite, when he took revenge on a mean sweetshop proprietor by leaving a dead mouse in a candy jar.

The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros

This coming-of-age story of a Latin American family in Chicago will strike a chord with anyone who ever felt torn between her dreams and her home. Esperanza Cordera, the poetic narrator of the series of titled fragments that make up this novel, is desperate for a life beyond Mango Street, where she lives in a tiny house brimming with her family. The final chapter (called “Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes”) always, always makes me tear up. “They will know I have gone away to come back,” Cisneros writes. “For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot get out.”

1985

The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

This dystopian novel is set in a future society where women are secondary citizens, essentially kept as concubines for reproductive purposes in a world where fertility rates are at such a decline they threaten human extinction. This hallmark of feminism and speculative fiction is equally great for book clubs or a mind-blowing solitary reading experience.

Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It’s easy to read Love in the Time of Cholera as a sentimental testament to the everlasting power of love. Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fell in love in childhood, but their star-crossed story was complicated by Fermina’s father, who forced her into marrying a wealthy doctor. After Fermina’s husband dies, Florentino reenters her life. But Marquez’s depictions of love in its various forms aren’t black and white — Fermina’s marriage allows her access to a life she would have been denied, and it’s arguable whether Fermina is the only woman Florentino “truly” loved (she’s certainly not the only one he sleeps with). Florentino’s ecstatic romanticism sometimes seems a sickness, not unlike the cholera that afflicts so many over the course of the novel.

Self-Help, Lorrie Moore

Lorrie Moore is required reading for sharp young women. Self-Help is her first collection of short stories, and its lessons will stick in your head like the words of an urbane, self-deprecating, brutally clever friend. From “How to Be an Other Woman”: “When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet.”

1986

Redwall, Brian Jacques

I know, we’re adults now, and it might be a little weird to revisit the Redwall series. I have a soft spot for these books — I loved them as a kid, and my boyfriend and I bonded over them on our very first date. If you’re not familiar with Redwall, it’s a series of children’s fantasy novels starring anthropomorphic animals, with their own caste system and rituals and incredibly complicated menus. Seriously, these mice/voles/otters/squirrels are foodies. The Redwall books are The Chronicles of Narnia for '80s kids. And we were lucky enough to have those too.

Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel

A groundbreaker. In 1986, Firebrand books published the first collection of Alison Bechdel’s syndicated comic strip, "Dykes to Watch Out For." The strip features Bechdel’s signature artistic style and is a warm, funny look at female relationships — lesbian and straight.

1987

Beloved, Toni Morrison

You probably read Beloved in a high school English class and talked at length about the novel’s brilliant handling of the psychological impact of slavery. That’s the first reason Beloved is important. The second reason is for the relationship between Sethe and her daughters, which renders the poignant, sometimes stifling mother-daughter bond with unparalleled accuracy.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Fannie Flagg

Flagg tells the heartwarming story of the unlikely friendship between middle-aged housewife Evelyn Crouch and elderly Ninny Threadgoode. Ninny’s stories empower Evelyn to take control of her life and marriage. A classic ode to way good girlfriends change each other’s lives.

1988

Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill

Bad Behavior takes the male gaze and hurls it back on its disgusting, narcissistic self. Remember the movie Secretary, with its saccharine ending? The movie is based on a short story from this collection, which ends in a grayer (and truer) place. Mary Gaitskill’s mixed-up women are hungry without knowing what they want to eat, and their experiences with resonate with you.

The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver

Taylor Greer, like so many young female protagonists, is ambitious and sharp and ready to do anything to escape her dead-end Kentucky town. She manages to avoid tying herself to a man and a child, only to get saddled with a baby almost as soon as she sets off on her journey to find herself. What happens after Turtle, an abused infant, is left in the passenger’s seat of Taylor’s car will take your breath away.

1989

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

In preparation for this roundup, I asked my mom what book she loved most from the '80s. "The Joy Luck Club!" she shouted, literally two seconds after the question came out of my mouth. Four Chinese immigrant women in San Francisco play mah-jongg while discussing their American-born daughters and food. Lots and lots of mouthwatering food.

Geek Love, Katherine Dunn

Geek Love is a cult classic. It stars the Binewski family, a cast of freakish ex-carnies hell-bent on a vision of the future stuffed with more oddities and mutations than those on display in their own home. After the success of Geek Love, Katherine Dunn retreated from the literary scene. Rumor has it that another novel is on the way, but that rumor’s been around since 1989. If and when Katherine Dunn publishes another book, the literary world will throw its own carnival.

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10 Books To Read After A Breakup

1. Him, Her, Him Again, The End of Him by Patricia Marx

Seriously. Read this. Realizing that the guy you’ve wasted time on for years is a vacuous, pretentious douche nugget is actually kind of funny, and Marx proves it. A satirist who writes for the New Yorker, she’s confessed that the book — about an unnamed, neurotic college girl who spends 10 years pining for a pretentious PhD student — is based on her own experience with her own unnamed douche nugget, which is probably why it feels SO right.

2. This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

The lovelorn main character routinely screws over the women he’s dating, but you can’t help but like him a little bit, since he’s one of those inimitable Diaz protagonists. It’s snappy and fun to read, and the final story will remind you that men need to realize they’re assholes before they become non-assholes, which sometimes takes awhile.

3. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

A departure from Wharton’s normal New York society jam, this sad-as-hell stark and beautiful novella is about a man with a sickly wife living in a small town who falls for her pretty young caretaker. It does not end well. People have worse lives than you. Now go change out of those sweatpants, muchacha.

4. I Don’t Care About Your Band by Julie Klausner

I’ll let Ms. Klausner, a comedian and successful podcaster, sell this for you.

“As a kid, I took my cues from [Miss] Piggy, chasing every would-be Kermit in my vicinity with porcine voracity and what I thought was feminine charm. Remember how content Kermit was, just strumming his banjo on a tree trunk in the swamp? That's the guy I've chased my whole life, killing myself trying to show him how fabulous I am. Kermit never appreciated what he had in Piggy, because she was just one great thing about his awesome life. I wonder how many guys from my generation looked to Kermit as an example of what the coolest guy in the room looks like. How maybe they think it's fine to defer the advances of the fabulous women they know will always be there, while they dreamily pursue creative endeavors and dabble with other contenders.”

GAH, IT’S JUST SO GOOD.

5. Monica’s Story by Andrew Morton

Yes, that Monica. You might feel like it’s confusing that this book is on the list, but not only is it Scandal-level entertainment (and real life!), you also look back at the 1998 scandal in a totally different way than you might have. She was 22 and infatuated with a manipulative married man. Sure, he also happened to be the most powerful guy in the free world, but the story is more relatable than you might think. I felt stuff.

6. Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

Not for the faint-hearted. A blue-collar housekeeper in a police station, being questioned about the murder of her longtime employer, an eccentric and wealthy elderly woman — and that’s just where it starts. The heart of Dolores’ story is the actions she takes when her drunk, abusive husband rapes their young daughter. It’s a chilling book but showcases the resilience of women, even those trapped in unbearable circumstances, in a really powerful way.

7. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

Connected tales of a small town and its residents, who are mostly lonely and sexually repressed. Not as bleak as Ethan Frome, but similar deal, except the female characters are more human and complex.

8. The Position by Meg Wolitzer

This novel tracks a suburban family, whose mother and father published a Joy of Sex-style book of sex positions with paintings of themselves as the models, over a period of about 20 years. The book became a cult success, and their children (two girls and two boys) grow up in its shadow. It depicts adult relationships in a very realistic but still interesting, way — and the character of Holly, the older girl, is fascinating.

9. Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age In The Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

This sprawling reported nonfiction book is so absorbing that you'll forget about all your problems. LeBlanc, a journalist, captures the tiniest aspects of the lives of two teenage Puerto Rican girls as they grow up in a bad neighborhood, have kids young, and one ends up in prison for working as a mill girl for her flashy heroin-dealing boyfriend. (At the end of the book, they're in their late twenties and mid-thirties; LeBlanc spent 10 years basically living with their families.) But LeBlanc doesn't condescend to the women, nor does she criticize their choices. She simply observes and reports, and her dedication shows that she truly cares about breaking the cycle of poverty.

10. How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley

Crosley is like your smartest, funniest female friend, who articulates all the delights and inconveniences about being a young, ambitious woman in a big city that you've always felt but never known how to explain it. The last essay, "Off the Back of a Truck," is about Crosley's relationship with a guy who secretly had another long-term girlfriend at the same time. The girlfriend eventually finds Crosley in the guy's phone (under "Doug") and calls her. It's really rough, and it articulates the steps of breakups in a way that will confirm you're not insane for wanting to smack everyone who asks, "How long were you dating?"

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