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26 Raucous New Novels Featuring Very Messy Women
Messy women of the world…assemble!
The very broad theme for this collection of books is messy women, and that can mean a lot of different things: women who find themselves in messes, women who make their own messes via questionable life choices, women who deliberately seek to get messy, and then the occasional and actual messy woman. Harried. Untidy. Bad with condiments.
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All of the books here are recent (published since January 2024) or coming very soon. Also, each title was specifically chosen by the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ editorial squad, exclusively composed of women who may or may not have some undisclosed experience with messiness themselves.
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This stuff seems to be in the zeitgeist just now. Several books listed below have hit a nerve and crossed over from bookworm circles into the larger pop culture conversation. Most fall into the category of contemporary or literary fiction, but there are a few interesting splashes of genre flavor concerning sentient protoplasm, AI chatbots, 1950s lesbian pulp fiction, and international incidents.
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Check out the descriptive intros, then click the book cover images for more details about each title. You can also use the Want to Read button to add interesting leads to your personal bookshelf.
If it feels like every book club you hear about is reading this one, that’s because they are. Filmmaker, musician, and renaissance woman Miranda July has clearly hit a nerve with this portrait of an artist in middle age who deliberately upends her life in search of new freedoms—sexual, domestic, creative, and otherwise. Check out the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Ratings & Reviews pages for a wild (and ongoing) discussion of this irreverent and yet totally serious book. Ìý
When aspiring writer Jane married filmmaker John, they both had visions of a progressive, sane, egalitarian union—and the attendant joys of parenthood. But it didn’t work out that way. Sarah Manguso’s acclaimed 2024 novel chronicles one woman’s valiant efforts to hold it all together while the forces of tradition and inertia tear it all apart. The good news: A hopeful and nuanced coda is included.
With the razor-tipped novel Colored Television, Danzy Senna (Caucasia) delivers a dark comedy about cultural appropriation and Hollywood’s “racial identity–industrial complex.â€� While housesitting at a luxurious Los Angeles home, novelist Jane Gibson winds up making a Faustian bargain with the entertainment industry. Things go spectacularly wrong, but at least Jane's making use of thatÌýexcellent wine cellar. That’s not nothing.
Told with humor and heart, the latest from author Catherine Newman (We All Want Impossible Things) tells the story of one week in a Cape Cod beach rental, where matriarch Rachel (“Rocky�) has vacationed with her family for 20-odd years. With her kids growing up and her parents growing frail, Rocky stumbles her way through a kind of accelerated coming-of-middle-age journey. Messes are made. Secrets are revealed. Love is affirmed.
The tagline on this second novel from Korean American author R.O. Kwon (The Incendiaries) is pretty great: How brightly can you burn before you light your life on fire? That’s the question plaguing photographer Jin Han, whose obsession with ballerina Lidija Jung is artistic, sexual, intellectual, and soul-deep. Alas, there’s an existing marriage in play—and an old family curse. Exhibit is a literary queer romance with the intensity cranked up to 11.
Billed as a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion, and bad behavior, Kiley Reid’s Come and Get It charts the adventures of Millie Cousins, senior-year residential assistant at the University of Arkansas, circa 2017. Amid shady professors and rowdy undergrads, readers will find plenty of smart women making plenty of questionable decisions. Also look for some interesting observations about privilege, race, queer politics, and campus power dynamics.
Finally, an answer to the age-old question: Can a determined woman find true love with a properly trained sentient blob? With her debut novel, author Maggie Su tells the story of 20-something Vi Liu and her quest to create the perfect boyfriend out of some discarded protoplasm. Su leans into the more playful traditions of magical realism to explore serious questions about desire and self-discovery. Sugary cereals are involved, somehow.
As a busy television executive and twice-divorced mother of two, Lisa Darling doesn’t have time for drama. But when handsome new coworker Zach Russo arrives in the office, she finds herself having feelings she hasn’t felt in a long, long time. Are these hot flashes a perimenopause symptom? Or are they hormonal flares in the traditional, old-fashioned sense? Hard to tell. Does it matter? Author Jane Costello has the details.
Inspired by the author’s own personal experiences, Crush presents a Generation X couple who decide to test the boundaries of marriage and desire in post-pandemic America. Author Ada Calhoun is a veteran journalist and has splashed around in these waters before via nonfiction (Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis). But with Crush, Calhoun aims for a different kind of truth through fiction.
Chicago-born author Claire Lombardo won a devoted readership with her 2019 intergenerational family drama, The Most Fun We Ever Had. Her new book profiles 57-year-old Julia Ames as she navigates the messy terrain of parental regret, evolving relationships, and life’s relentless changes. Lombardo is interested in the complex messiness of being human, especially in regard to family bonds.
Lambda Literary Fellow (and former criminal defense attorney) Anna Dorn is known for fast and funny books that splash around merrily in the weirdness of contemporary culture. Perfume & Pain follows the personal and artistic adventures of author Astrid Dahl, featuring antique perfume bottles, 1950s lesbian pulp fiction, and bossy vegans. Also: a very specific intoxicant cocktail known as the Patricia Highsmith.
Meanwhile, debut author Nussaibah Younis explores another part of the world—and the boundaries of grim humor—with her audacious dark comedy Fundamentally. After an awkward breakup in London, researcher Dr. Nadia Amin accepts an ethically questionable U.N. job offer at an Iraqi refugee camp. Nadia’s new gig goes in many unexpected directions as she deals with sullen staffers, overly optimistic volunteers, and a problematically horny Frenchman.
Teaching at a school for underprivileged boys in New York City, a young Palestinian woman gets mixed up with a street swindle by reselling Birkin bags in a doomed pyramid scheme. If that sounds like an unusual premise, that’s because Yasmin Zaher has written an unusual book. In fact, The Coin thoughtfully juxtaposes all sorts of interesting ideas: poverty and materialism; purity and corruption; misery and humor. America!
Acclaimed Australian writer Charlotte Wood (The Weekend) was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize with her latest novel, which follows a middle-aged Sydney woman on a kind of accidental (and possibly terminal) spiritual retreat. Fleeing from a failing marriage and crushing grief, our unnamed narrator winds up in a destitute monastery to ponder the big questions. What is the good life? How do we live ethically in this dying world? Also, what’s up with all these mice?
Thirty-two-year-old Sanjana is finally ready to divorce the husband she left a year ago, after a disagreement over whether or not the couple should have children (she's anti, he's pro). There's only one problem: He seems to have vanished. Her attempt to track him down leads her on a twisty journey to aÌýremote, maybe-cultishÌýresort run by her doppelgänger, Sanjena. Things get weird!Ìý
Brooklyn divorcée Rachel Bloom is back in the game. Kind of. Online dating apps have resulted in a few interesting encounters with younger men—and women, too—but no single person seems to have all the qualities Rachel needs. So she turns to technology and builds an A.I. chatbot programmed to maximize the emotional efficiency of midlife dating. Amy Shearn’s novel celebrates the escalating weirdness of just being human in the 21st century. Ìý
What’s a frustrated Muslim scholar to do when her artsy Ph.D. can’t even get her a middle-class salary in America? Why, marry rich, of course! The narrator in Liquid: A Love Story goes about this systematically, spreadsheeting out 100 dates without regard to ideology or gender—just money. Author Mariam Rahmani delivers a lacerating satire in the shape of a rom-com, with a satisfying twist ending in Tehran.
Set in the pulsing heart of Berlin’s underground arts scene, Good Girl introduces 19-year-old Nilab Haddadi, the daughter of middle-class Afghan refugees trying to stay low amid Germany’s metastasizing Islamophobia. Poet Aria Aber�s debut novel is a coming-of-age story, essentially, featuring warehouse raves, public housing, bad romance, and racial tensions.
Slated to hit shelves on April 8, Kate Folk’s debut novel profiles a delightful young woman who is…well, she’s sexually attracted to airplanes. Fatally attracted might be the better term—Linda hopes to marry her ideal aircraft one day by dying in a fiery crash. Look, the heart is a mysterious organ. Folk’s variation on the traditional love story goes in strange directions, but early readers are praising the book’s dark humor and genuinely lovable protagonist.
Also coming in April, Audition is the latest novel from celebrated author Katie Kitamura, whose 2021 novel, Intimacies, was longlisted for the National Book Award. Kitamura’s new story features a veteran actress from the New York City theater scene, her mysterious lunch companion, and some structural experimentation with competing narratives. Who are these two? What roles are they playing? Is this a novel or a puzzle? The answer is yes.
Francine Stevenson is a mess, but for entirely understandable reasons. After years of caring for her fragile mother, Francine is wrecked by mom’s sudden death. Pills and disco dancing help, but not enough. Then one day a bullied 10-year-old shows up at her door seeking refuge, and everything changes. Renee Swindle’s heart-tugger, coming April 25, explores ideas about friendship and grief, loneliness and connection, and the power of laughter versus despair.
Coming in May, author Honor Jones� debut novel tells the story of a recently divorced mom forced by circumstances to return to her childhood home. Living in perpetual flashback mode, Margaret tries to care for her daughters in the haunted spaces of her own childhood. A book about the essential tyranny of adulthood, Sleep provides a carefully observed character portrait of a woman who's determined to be the mother she never really had.
Thirty-year-old trans woman Max is disappointed with her career as a lawyer, her ambitions as a poet…everything, really. So when she tumbles down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve Party, Max decides to leverage the head-rattling experience and make one more go at the heteronormative life. Author Nicola Dinan (Bellies) explores issues of reinvention, regret, and the treacherous allure of domesticity—on shelves May 25.
And now for something completely different: Darrow Fair’s debut novel, coming in May, features a young woman in a very specific kind of trouble. Kidnapped and held for ransom by European political activists, headstrong 17-year-old Severine Guimard makes a series of dubious decisions, international headlines, and maybe even…some friends. Youthful exuberance meets Marxist ideology in the age of viral celebrity. Good times!
YA author Renée Ahdieh (The Wrath and the Dawn) makes her adult fiction debut with Park Avenue, which is being pitched as Succession meets Crazy Rich Asians. Young Manhattan lawyer Jia Song has just been dispatched to help her firm’s biggest client, an impossibly wealthy Korean family that’s coming apart at the seams. In public. In spectacular fashion. Turns out jet-set crisis management can get messy. Coming in June.
Finally, if you can wait until July, this tragicomic debut from author Katie Lee argues that even the worst messes can be cleaned up with grace and humor. Told over the course of several months, Yee’s book follows a Chinese American woman as she navigates marital infidelity and cancer at the same damn time. It’s laugh-or-cry territory, clearly, and our narrator copes by going both ways at once. Recommended for fans of Nora Ephron and Crying in H Mart.
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