On a pilgrimage to Wuthering heights, Samantha Ellis found herself arguing with her best friend about which heroine was best: Jane Eyre or Cathy Earnshaw. She was all for wild, free, passionate Cathy, but her friend found Cathy silly, a snob who betrays Heathcliff for Edgar and makes them all unhappy - while courageous Jane makes her own way.
And that's when Samantha realsied that all her life she'd been trying to be Cathy when she should have been trying to be Jane.
So she decided to look again at her heroines - the girls, women, books that had shaped her ideas of the world and how to live. Some of them stood up to the scrutiny (she will always love Lizzy Bennett); some of them decidedly did not (turns our Katy Carr from What Katy Did isn't a carefree rebel, she's a drip). There were revelations (the real heroine of Gone With the Wind? It's Melanie), joyous reunions (Anne of Green Gables), poignant memories (Sylvia Plath) and tearful goodbyes (Lucy Honeychurch). And then there was Jilly Cooper......
How To Be A Heroine is a funny, touching, inspiring exploration of the role of heroines, and our favourite books, in all our lives - and how they change over time, for better or worse, just as we do.
This was such a fun book to read that I could not put it down. The author takes us on a romp through the heroines of books that she has read throughout her life, how she has internalised some of those behaviours and the effect that they have had on her life.
Her chapter headings are:
1. The Little Mermaid
2. Anne of Green Gables
3. Lizzy Bennett
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
However, these are not essays solely on each of these characters. Throughout each chapter Ms. Ellis draws on many other fictional characters who have crossed her reading path and thus this book becomes a multi-coloured ramble through the flowers and thorns she has encountered in her reading.
This is also part-memoir and we learn much about the authors Iraqi-Jewish upbringing and culture and the expectations that were put on her as part of this community.
Although, written from a femininist perspective I felt that both women and men would appreciate the message that Ms Ellis is conveying in this book. In her final chapter she writes:
"No writer is writing me a better journey. No writer is guiding me through my misunderstandings and muddles and wrong turns to reach my happy ending. And then I realise I am the writer. I don't mean because I write. I mean because we all write our own lives."
I liked this conclusion to her book. This is a light read with an important message within. None of us have to settle for another person's plan for our lives. Life itself can give us the inner strength to be the person who we want to be.
In the postscript of this book the author provides her mother's recipe for masafan, an Iraqi-Jewish type of marzipan that she mentions in the book. I had a go at making this the other day and judging by how quickly my grandchildren packed them away they were a resounding success and I encourage you to give them a try.
Within the covers of this book Ms Ellis has given us insight into books, reading, culture and a recipe for gorgeously sweet biscuits. A marvellous combination.
ISBN: 978 0099575566
Publisher: Vintage
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.
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