How to Be a Heroine Or, What I've Learned from Reading Too Much
Author(s): Samantha Ellis
While debating literature's greatest heroines with her best friend, thirtysomething playwright Samantha Ellis has a revelation--her whole life, she's been trying to be Cathy Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights when she should have been trying to be Jane Eyre.
With this discovery, she embarks on a retrospective look at the literary ladies--the characters and the writers--whom she has loved since childhood. From early obsessions with the March sisters to her later idolization of Sylvia Plath, Ellis evaluates how her heroines stack up today. And, just as she excavates the stories of her favorite characters, Ellis also shares a frank, often humorous account of her own life growing up in a tight-knit Iraqi Jewish community in London. Here a life-long reader explores how heroines shape all our lives.
General Information
- :
- : Random House
- : Vintage
- : 0.208652
- : 01 January 2015
- : United Kingdom
- : 01 March 2015
- : books
Other Specifications
- : Samantha Ellis
- : Paperback
- : 1
- : English
- : 272
More About The Product
A funny, touching, inspiring exploration of the role of heroines, and our favourite books, in all our lives.
"Any woman with a remotely bookish childhood will find great pleasure in How to be a Heroine... like Ellis, I find it reassuring that Lizzy Bennet can admit that she was wrong about Darcy, have used Scarlett's indomitable mantra in times of adversity, and have every sympathy with the women who keep their bank accounts separate as in Lace" -- Daisy Goodwin Sunday Times "This is quite simply a genius idea for a book... A fantastically inspirational memoir that makes you want to reread far too many books" -- Viv Groskop Observer "Brilliant... From Lizzy Bennet to 'go-getting Judy Jordan' from Lace, Samantha Ellis did what we all do, mostly without realising: tried other people's lives on for size in literature" Red "The best kind of book: one that I gobbled up, wanting to go slow to savour it but unable to stop reading until it was all gone. One that made me want to run to the bookshop to buy copies of novels I've never got round to reading and devour those, too" -- Rebecca Armstrong Independent "Delightfully honest and warmly funny" -- Eithne Farry Daily Mail
Samantha Ellis is a playwright and journalist. The daughter of Iraqi-Jewish refugees, she grew up thinking her family had travelled everywhere by magic carpet. From an early age she knew she didn't want their version of a happy ending - marriage to a nice Iraqi-Jewish boy - so she read books to find out what she did want. Her plays include Patching Havoc, Sugar and Snow and Cling To Me Like Ivy, and she is a founding member of women's theatre company Agent 160. She lives in London.
