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Two Women Telling Women’s Stories
We can all learn from the roles of women in the past, as exposed by women writers.
I’m writing today about two authors I admire, both of whom write historical fiction, placing women at the centre of the action.
Emma Donoghue’s historical novels and short stories include Slammerkin, The Wonder, The Sealed Letter, Frog Music, Life Mask, The Pull of the Stars and Astray
I acquired The Wonder at an event during Listowel Writers’ Week in early June 2017. Donoghue was speaking about her process, and the filming of Room, before signing copies of The Wonder.
Later I read Slammerkin and The Sealed Letter. In 2020 I read Frog Music and the short story collection, Astray. Earlier this year I read The Pull of the Stars.
Two gifts
Like the other author I’m featuring here, Donoghue has two gifts that are essential to the writer of historical novels: persistence in research and an understanding of what makes people tick. She will take contemporaneous accounts of a real event, some of them little more than a paragraph or two, and try to imagine what might lie behind the public version of the story. Some, as in the case of The Sealed Letter, documenting in considerable detail the evidence provided by both parties to a…