“I think the reckoning has been in the water for ages, and the pandemic has made the issue unignorable. It is very convenient for a very wealthy minority if the rest of us feel sad and inadequate, and desperate to work ourselves happy. And the climate emergency has started to make us feel very differently about the traditional ‘rewards’ for hard work (holidays, shopping).”

Safe space

Outside of books, think about what we’re watching and listening to: Yellowjackets and Billie Eilish both feature the primal scream of women searching for catharsis outside of the traditional norms. In the 2019 book Why Women Read Fiction by Helen Taylor, writer, director and commentator Bidisha remarks: “I think women read a lot of fiction because life is so crappy.” Do we disappear into fiction so we can safely examine and reflect on the things that do us the most harm?

“I’m not a historian, but I assume that BLM, #MeToo, the murder of Breonna Taylor, the 2020 protests and social media are all contributing to an upheaval in how Black women think about their experiences of violence (institutional and domestic),” says Post-Traumatic author Chantal V Johnson. “This violence has been minimised/erased for many reasons: a failure of both early white feminism and civil rights activism to adequately address our experiences, a justified suspicion of carceral feminism and misogyny within our families and culture that we have to address. Storytelling is one part of that, but cannot be the only part: the goal in my view is a political movement against violence and abuse.”

Shedding some light

In an age of burnout and anger, we need to find answers. And, if that’s the case, what’s also crucial about all of these books is that while they explore our darkest moments, they are also building towards acceptance, resolution and hope.

“I wanted to give my women a hopeful, happy ending,” explains Buchanan. “Realistically, I think and hope we’re starting to see a huge structural revolution – it’s not something that an individual can solve. We’ve all tried that, and it doesn’t work for us.

“But if I want readers to take away one message from Careering, it’s the realisation that our dreams have to be bigger than our jobs. Work won’t ever love us back, but it was never supposed to. We can’t keep outsourcing our self-esteem and sense of identity to our employers. But maybe it begins with a little honesty and reflection. It will be painful and awkward but we need to work out what it is that we’re looking for work to give us, emotionally. Then we can begin to create it for ourselves.”

Johnson also writes towards notes of hope: “I thought [Post-Traumatic’s] ending should land softly. I prefer the word recovery to healing. Recovery denotes ‘getting something back that you’ve lost’ which is more resonant to me than ‘becoming whole’. As one of my characters would say, ‘Wholeness is, like, a myth or whatever.’

“Violence and mistreatment can deprive survivors of their ability to relate to other people, so activities that enable commonality can be vital for recovery. In Post-Traumatic, commonality happens through advocacy for others, reading, music, and friendship. Therapy as well, but to me, good therapy is about more than disclosure: it’s a kind of friendship.”

In Post-Traumatic, Vivian’s story concludes: “The best writing was like a good friend, in the way that it gave you permission to be yourself.”

These new books are holding up to the light what it means to be a woman in 2022 to and, in doing so, are showing us ways to navigate the most complex of times.

2022’s biggest book trend: women on the edge