Messy Women in Fiction

At the risk of “treating complex women in literature as a ‘trope,'” I must admit there are few archetypes I love more than a messy woman. Getting to witness female characters act badly, make wild decisions, and generally buck expectations can be a liberatory reading experience. Check out some of my favorite examples of messy women in recent fiction!

The book that inspired this whole post was Jen Beagin’s Big Swiss. Greta works as a transcriptionist for a sex therapist in Hudson Valley, New York, where she lives in a dilapidated Dutch farmhouse with her friend and a swarm of bees. She develops a fascination with the voice of one of the clients of the therapist, whom she nicknames “Big Swiss.” When Greta recognizes that voice in the wild, she embarks on a series of terrible choices, all designed to get closer to the woman. Most of the other characters on this list are in their twenties, so it’s nice to see Greta, a forty-something, portrayed with such weird nuance. Impossible to put down, both grotesque and laugh-out-loud funny, Big Swiss is a refutation of the standard trauma narrative and a perfect vehicle for unethical, bizarre voyeurism.

Perhaps the ultimate messy woman is the unnamed narrator of My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. She’s young, her parents have recently died and left her with a large inheritance, and her primary relationship is with her drug-pushing psychiatrist. As she increases her drug use, she moves deeper into blackouts, eventually seeking longer and more intense ways to escape from the world. Neither restful or relaxing, the journey with this narrator is dark and stressful, but will make you view grief and depression in new ways.

The main character, Edie, in Luster by Raven Leilani might be categorized as more naïve than messy. An artist in her twenties working a soul-sucking admin job, Edie makes some questionable sexual choices, including taking up with an older married man, Eric. The real drama begins though, when Eric’s wife invites Edie to live with them and she strikes up a tenuous relationship with both the wife and their adopted daughter who is Black, like Edie. As Bibliocommons reviewer FloraWest said, “Smart, fast-paced, and makes me glad I’m not in my 20s anymore.”

For another tangled web of complex relationships centered around a young woman, pick up Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times. Ava is a 22-year-old Irish expat living in Hong Kong and teaching English. She begins a murky relationship with rich British banker Julian; they sometimes sleep together, she quickly moves in with him, then he leaves on a long business trip while she stays in the luxury apartment alone. Ava then meets Edith, a Hong Kong local, and must toggle between her growing infatuation with Edith, her sense of obligation to Julian, and her indecision about what she truly desires.

Sometimes “messy” is too tame a word for a character’s behavior. In the aptly named My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, Korede’s sister Ayoola is beautiful, vivacious, and (more than occasionally) murderous. Korede has become accustomed to cleaning up Ayoola’s messes: she takes the body, cleans the blood, and counsels Ayoola on how one should act after one’s boyfriend is dead. But when Korede’s secret love, a handsome doctor she works with, asks for Ayoola’s number, she must decide between familial loyalty and saving this man.

Want more? Check out Messy Women in Fiction!

~Posted by Jane S.