Our host Vick Hope is joined by author and journalist Bryony Gordon.
Bryony Gordon is an author, journalist and mental health campaigner. She has written six Sunday Times bestselling books, including the number one bestsellers Mad Girl and You Got This. She founded Mental Health Mates, a peer support group that encourages people to move for their mental health, and in 2023 she was awarded the President’s Medal by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She wrote for the Telegraph for 24 years, and is now a columnist at the Daily Mail, and hosts a weekly podcast, The Life of Bryony. Bryony is a judge for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Her latest book Mad Woman is the eagerly anticipated follow-up to Mad Girl. Listen to the full episode here and read on to see Bryony’s top five most influential books written by women.
“It was the first time I read a book by a woman and realised that we were capable of all sorts of different things and we didn’t just have to be pigeon-holed into one genre […] It was definitely this book that made me see what was possible out there. That I could escape into other worlds and I could learn about the caste system in India – it was really powerful for me.”
“[Margaret Atwood] sort of predicted so much of what we live in now – women are seen as sexual objects and in many ways we’ve gone backwards because of the rise of cosmetic surgery and the digital world we live in. I need to go back and read it. I think now, more than ever, it’ll feel even more true.”
Alice is a democrat and she’s ideologically quite opposed to her husband, but she still falls in love with him. I find that quite fascinating. I think nowadays, we’re so black and white, binary, and we kind of silo ourselves into our groups of “I like this, I don’t like that, so I’m not going to talk to you” […] I think we are too quick to judge and I think connection is really key to contentment and to living happy lives.
I think Katherine Heiny is the funniest writer in the history of all time. [Standard Deviation] is the funniest book I have ever read, like laugh-out-loud funny – I just love it. And oh what magic – what magic to be able to make people laugh!
This book, I think, is one of the most incredible pieces of writing about addiction and I don’t hear it spoken about enough […] It just nails the female experience of addiction, the utter powerlessness, in such a brilliant way. I was blown away by it.
