How to Be a Heroine Or, What I've Learned from Reading too Much [Paperback]

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 ofWuthering Heightswhen 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.Introduction

1 The Little Mermaid
2 Anne of Green Gables
3 Lizzy Bennet
4 Scarlett O’Hara
5 Franny Glass
6 Esther Greenwood
7 Lucy Honeychurch
8 The Dolls (from the Valley)
9 Cathy Earnshaw
10 Flora Poste
11 Scheherazade

Postscript
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
“An honest and open-hearted book by someone whose life has been informed and enriched by her reading.” —Susan Hill, The Times(London)

“Not so much self-help as shelf-help, as Ellis applies fresh insights to her own life dilemmas and proffers some inspiring solutions to everyday problems. A truly brilliant read.” —Marie Claire

“A literary journey to self-discovery. . . . As Ellis shows in this charming, gracefully written memoir, literary heroines revealed to her new life stories, new selves and her own power to invent her life.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The best kind of book: one that I gobbled up . . . 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&rsl£_