5 More Singular Women Writers to Read if You Love Nell Zink

A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
So many details of Zink’s biography remind me of the life of Lucia Berlin. Zink and Berlin both had difficult childhoods. Both were brilliant and educated but didn’t settle on a standard career—Zink spent several years as a bricklayer and a secretary, while Berlin worked as a cleaning woman and a secretary in an emergency room, among many other jobs. Zink followed various loves and friendships to Philadelphia, Israel, and Germany, while Berlin married three times and moved around within the U.S., as well as to Mexico and Chile. Both wrote for years without any recognition or significant publication, and first published work through very small presses, and then were recognized by the literary establishment in a big way in the past few years. Living on the margins allowed each woman to develop a singular style. Their writing styles are not altogether similar—for one thing, Berlin wrote short stories while Zink specializes in novels—but the spirit behind their work is the same, built as it is upon a distinct confidence in their own singular artistic vision. They are both full of vigor, wit, and willingness to experiment in their prose.

Four Novels by Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras was a fascinating French novelist who lived from 1914 to 1996. (I was first introduced to her work as assigned reading in a class taught by Lucia Berlin.) Duras grew up in the country now known as Vietnam, and fell into poverty when her father died. As a teenager, she had an affair with Huynh Thuy Le, a man from a wealthy family. This became the basis of her 1984 novel The Lover. Four Novels collects four of her entrancing novellas, published between 1955 and 1960. Duras writes with gorgeous melancholy images and probing philosophical musings, such as this one from The Square: “In the end people are not good at happiness. They want it of course but when they have it they eat themselves away with dreaming.”

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
Leslie Marmon Silko looks at the standard structure for fiction and nonfiction suggested by the western literary canon and laughs. Her best known work is her classic novel, Ceremony, which tells the story of a young man who returns home to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation after serving in World War II, badly in need of a soul cure. If you’ve already read Ceremony, try Silko’s most recent book, 2011’s The Turquoise Ledge, a quirky memoir and meditation on nature.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Like Nell Zink, Jenny Offill has a style and structure all her own, as well as a marked erudition she uses to tell an entrancing story. Through keen minimalism, Dept. of Speculation tells the story of the unraveling of a marriage in the wake of having a child that takes readers to unexpected places, including meditations on Russian cosmonauts and Stoics.

Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson’s striking 1985 debut novel tells the story of a girl growing up in a Pentecostal community in England who believes she’s destined to become a missionary before realizing she is a lesbian. This book marked the beginning of a celebrated career for Winterson, as Zink’s debut The Wallcreeper appears to have for her.