Ester Bloom claims it is something male authors rarely accomplish. From her list of exceptions:
Ora, To The End of the Land (David Grossman)
Perhaps the ultimate book about a mother, one that deconstructs the myth while at the same time conveying the incomparable intensity of maternal love. The Times’ review of this anti-war novel calls Grossman a “genius” and says, “Ora’s level of self-consciousness, her alertness to the emotional contours of things, her exquisite introspection, give this story the depth and privacy of an Ingmar Bergman film.”
Little Bee, The Other Hand (Chris Cleave)
Raw, vital, vivid, absolutely engrossing—the character and the book both. A necessary story about the post-colonial world as seen by a scarred Nigerian girl who refuses to accept the unfairness of life as she knows it.
Dolores Price, She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
It takes guts to start a 20th-century novel with a pre-teen heroine named Dolores. Lamb pulls off her voice perfectly and creates around it a story that captures the lust and hunger, sadness and confusion of adolescence and its aftermath. Towards the end, when life delivered Dolores yet another setback, I remember throwing the book against my bedroom wall in fury at the unfairness of everything—and then crawling over to retrieve it because I couldn’t stop reading.
The Dish 