How to Be a Heroine, Or, What I've Learned From Reading Too MuchHow to Be a Heroine, Or, What I've Learned From Reading Too Much

Debating literature's greatest heroines with a friend, playwright Samantha Ellis has a revelation -- "My whole life, I'd been trying to be Cathy, when I should have been trying to be Jane." 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 later idolizations 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. Reflecting on the girls, the women, and the books that she loves the most, here a life-long reader explores how these heroines have shaped all of our lives.