Spectator books of the year: Ruth Scurr on a terrific year for women writers

2015 has been a terrific year for women writers. I have especially enjoyed Mary Beard’s sceptical and subversive history of Rome, SPQR (Profile, £25); Alexandra Harris’s literary history of the English weather, Weatherland: Writers and Artists Under English Skies (Thames & Hudson, £24.95); and Antonia Fraser’s witty memoir of growing up, My History (Weidenfeld, £9.99).

I loved Anne Enright’s darkly glinting novel of family life, The Green Road (Cape, £16.99), but my female novelist of the year is Elena Ferrante. I found Ann Goldstein’s translations of the Neopolitan novels — My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child (published by Europa Editions)— completely engrossing: like a return to childhood reading.