How To Be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis

Genre: Nonfiction 

Publisher: Chatto & Windus

Pages: 272

Rating: ★★★



Synopsis

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. 

My Thoughts

This book was seriously cute. I have become more and more interested in reading memoirs lately so as soon as I heard about this book I added it to the top of my list. 

This memoir follows Ellis's life and the books she read and how they shaped her life. I really enjoyed reading a good majority of it. I especially liked reading about what she though of the books that I have read and love. Her insights were spot on and it was interesting to see how her opinion about the characters changed after rereading the books. 

To me, the book was even better when I was reading about the books I haven't read. Ellis gives a synopsis with every book so you aren't left completely confused when she starts analyzing them. I now have a list of books that I never read but seriously need to read as a result of this Ellis's memoir.  

There wasn't too much literary criticism, mostly personal reflection. I would definitely recommend this to any book lover, but also completely understand that this definitely isn't for everyone. 

My Favorite Line

Reading might spoil my eyes, as my grandmother warned me it would, but Mr. Darcy showed it wouldn't stop me finding a husband. A gorgeous, intelligent husband, in fact, because real men liked bookish girls. It said so in Pride and Prejudice.