The shortlist for the 2025 Women’s Prize has been announced, and as always, Kate is Reading is all over it. Read through Kate’s thoughts on the shortlisted books below, and pop by the bookshop to ask us about them!
This year, the Women’s Prize shortlist straddles sex, drugs and multigenerational trauma. Three of the titles are debut novels that feature protagonists grappling with cross-cultural identities. Then we have a suspenseful erotic drama (also a debut) that questions whether reparations can ever truly be made for historical wrongs. Rounding out the list is a sexy transition into middle age womanhood and a late-in-life friendship with complicated benefits. It’s a sensory feast, and maybe sometimes a sensory overload, but overall it’s a solid group of stories, though I wonder if the project of representing a diversity of experience has taken priority over representing a diversity of form and style in this selection.
In a line: Sex, drugs and the complex shame of being a Muslim woman in modern Europe
Vibe check: Snorting speed off a grimy toilet sink at 4am while debating the racial politics of Nietzsche
You will like it if: You have a high tolerance for witnessing the carelessness of youth, and the deeper trauma that underlies it
In a line: A forty-something woman makes increasingly unpredictable decisions
Vibe check: Total sexual liberation, dancing wildly in the dark, making it back for the school run
You will like it if: You leave your sense of judgment at the door, and embrace a sense of unhinged self-indulgence
The Persians by Sanam Mahloudi
In a line: New handbags mask old wounds for three generations of passionate Iranian women, haunted by the diminishing prestige of a family name
Vibe check: Drama drama drama
You will like it if: You have a secret wish to spend Christmas in Aspen sharing bottomless martinis with the members of an ostentatious Persian matriarchy
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
In a line: Life is long and love is unexpected
Vibe check: A slow, rambling walk on a brisk day with an old friend
You will like it if: You know in your bones that Elizabeth Strout is a demi-god whose warm and simple prose belies her ability to disinter the delicate grief born of our compromises
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
In a line: An uninvited house guest invites uninvited feelings
Vibe check: A simmering sauce of erotic, historic and dramatic tension about to boil over in a very charming Dutch kitchen
You will like it if: You can handle the suspense of watching the slow, insidious upending of everything you thought to be true
Fundamentally by Noussaibah Younis
In a line: A fast-paced romp through Syria in which our heroine learns that rehabilitating ISIS brides may not be a glamorous shortcut to altruism after all
Vibe check: The Office meets Foreign Correspondent meets Sex and the City
You will like it if: You want to be jolted awake by an effervescent and outspoken new voice in fiction, unafraid to rollick in the turbulent waters of terrorism and bureaucratic corruption
What I think might win: All Fours or The Safekeep
Most raucous: Fundamentally
Least raucous: Tell Me Everything
Most dysfunctional, overinvolved family: The Persians
Most dysfunctional, estranged family: Good Girl
Best gay brother: The Safekeep
Most creatively erotic: All Fours and The Safekeep
Happy reading!