How To Be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis

I love reading about people making lists and achieving goals.  It's nuts, I know, but I'm instantly attracted to people who set out to do X, Y, and Z.  I want to follow their journeys.  It makes me want to start a journey of my own.

When I saw How To Be a Heroine sitting on the sale table at Barnes and Noble, I had to pick it up.  A whole memoir about a woman who reexamines her life through the lens of the heroines she read about growing up?  Yes, please.  

In the prologue to the novel, Samantha Ellis, an Iraqi-Jewish playwright, sets out her plan.  After realizing that her admiration for Cathy from Wuthering Heights might have been better placed on Jane from Jane Eyre, she decides to embark on a journey of self-discovery.  She rereads the books that impacted her the most as she was growing up and analyzes her feelings for the heroines she used to admire.  Some of them still hold up as good role models, while others, she realizes, don't.  The novel reads like a memoir mixed in with literary criticism, with each chapter dedicated to a different character matched with a period of time in her life.  By the end of her journey, she realizes that all of her past heroines formed a part of her heart, for better or for worse.

This is a book for people who truly love to read.  The discussion, the references, and the analysis are refreshingly thoughtful and genuine.  Ellis' personality really shines through in the text, and while reading, there were multiple times that I wished I could talk to her in person, so I could either debate or agree with her on some of her views.  I don't know anyone who reads as much as I do, so I can't have intellectual discussions about literature in my real life.  How To Be a Heroine gave me a lot to think about regarding women in literature in a way that wasn't preachy or pretentious.  It was just smart.  I enjoyed the level of thought presented here and I wasn't bored at all while reading, even when I hadn't read the book Ellis was discussing.  This novel make me feel more intelligent after reading it, which is a wonderful thing.

Ellis' self-discovery project tempts me to start my own - to reread my old childhood favorites and examine how the characters might have influenced me.  I suppose that's the highest compliment that I can give a novel such as this; I found it to be very inspiring.  How To Be a Heroine is interesting not only as a memoir of a talented woman, but as an examination of how literature can be a powerful force in our lives.