I'm obsessed with 'Crazy Girl' Literature
And an interview with Jen Eastwood (@sicksadlit) on the genre
Welcome to Gen Z Translator, where I break down trending topics on Fridays. If you’re new, you can subscribe here and follow me on Instagram. Views are my own. Happy reading!
In the contemporary literary fiction novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, the main character is never given a name. If you paid attention in English class, maybe you already know why this is. Without a name, the reader inserts themselves into the role of the narrator, projecting their own traits and characteristics onto the protagonist.
As the character in Ottessa’s novel makes increasingly more despicable choices, the reader is forced to reckon with the internal and external similarities. Do I, too, have the potential for unashamed chaos and self-serving destruction?
Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel is just one example of genre growing in consumer popularity, one I like to call “Crazy Girl Literature.”
The “Crazy Girl” has existed for centuries. Think Greek mythology, where women like Medea, Cassandra, and Circe were driven over the edge, or tortured madwomen in the Victorian era, seen as hysterical and dangerous. The “Crazy Girl” is a 50s woman (The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath) and a modern woman (Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn). She’s a housewife (Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder) and a college student (Bunny by Mona Awad). The “Crazy Girl” is abhorred by society, but endlessly fascinating. She’s a character study into what women could be if they gave into that voice in their heads.
Keep reading until the end of this newsletter for an interview with bookstagrammer on the book craze as well as an exclusive announcement.
The reason this genre is being siloed now is thanks to #BookTok and #Bookstagram. (The two phrases are a way to refer to the algorithm on TikTok and Instagram that targets book lovers). Reading habits are becoming internet fads, and internet fads are becoming reading habits.
In 2024, “romantasy1” made it into the top dictionary words. Upon its release a couple weeks ago, Rebecca Yarros’ third installation in her dragon university series, Onyx Storm, was the fastest selling book in 20 years, according to The New York Times.
After a brief threat to TikTok, some BookTokers worried about where they would go to find community. But BookTok has transcended TikTok – if you look on Instagram, the hashtag has 7.7 million posts.
Influencing is just as effective in the book world as it is in any other industry. There’s bountiful opportunities for readers, writers, and agents to find their niche online, as well as to promote said niche.
The difference is that the publishing industry is slow, and trends are fast. That’s why the “Crazy Girl” genre is so interesting to me, both in literature and on screen.
It takes hundreds of years of female rage and boils it into one category. It leaves the door open for future stories that explore the demonization and duality of female-identifying characters without requiring overnight churn. It also gives space for older stories to come back to the forefront. It says, “Yes, us crazy girls have always existed and will continue to exist.” There’s power in reclaiming the “crazy” label and therefore, reclaiming the female experience. What if women really were as bad as they’ve been made out to be?
Without further ado, I’d like to transition into an interview on this bookstagrammar’s journey to bookstagram-ness, as well as why this genre is so fascinating, what books fit the bill, and how you can set realistic reading goals this year.
@SickSadLit Q&A
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity).
Can you tell me your name and a little bit about yourself, like what part of the world you’re from and your day job?
My name is Jenny Eastwood, and I live in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, all the way down in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and by day, I work in advertising. My official title is creative social strategist, and basically what that entails is I look after some of our major enterprise accounts. I help them launch on social media, manage their social media strategy, their paid strategy, and work with their creative agencies to bring their big above-the-line campaigns to life on social media.
You run @sicksadlit on Instagram. Can you explain what bookstagram is (for those who have never heard of it before) and what inspired you to get into it? What has the journey building an account been like?
The name is quite funny, how it's sort of got its own little corner of the world, but “Library Instagram” is another way I like to refer to it. Basically, it is a type of account or a niche of account focusing on books. Some people talk about all different kinds of books, all different kinds of genres. Others focus in on a specific genre, like horror or literary fiction or contemporary fiction.
My story is actually quite funny. I used to be a true crime YouTuber, and my channel was called “Matter of Crime.” Still exists, if you want to go and check it out, but I did that for heaps of years and grew it fairly successfully to 40,000 subscribers, but had a bit of a moral and ethical quandary about it last year, 2024, and decided I didn't feel good about doing it anymore. I also used to have a TikTok account about it, which was also quite successful. I had like 24,000 followers over there. One day, I just decided to shut up shop.
Because of the nature of my day job working in social media, I like to test and learn and try different strategies on myself and my own accounts first before I recommend things to clients. And honestly, I was of the opinion that Instagram was dead, that no one was using it, you couldn't grow on it anymore, and there was no point. I decided to give it a go with a genre or a type of account that I knew I would enjoy making content on, and that I could consistently post on because I'll never, ever get tired of talking about books. I'm always reading, I've always been a reader. I had this dormant account. I created it in 2020, and it used to be called “Reads You Should Care About,” and initially it was focused specifically on books about social issues and cultural issues, mainly non-fiction, but I literally had made five posts. I had like 50 followers, and then I just left it for years. But in first of March last year, I picked it back up and basically completely overhauled it, re-branded it to “Fiction and Fauna,” and started experimenting and posting seriously on there.
I have so thoroughly enjoyed it. The world of Bookstagram is so wholesome and amazing, and I've met so many cool people. I've made so many actual, real life friends through it. When I first started, it was sort of like an everything to everyone type of account. I covered all sorts of books, and then sort of continued to find my voice and dial into the genre and the niche that worked the best for me, which ended up being books about angry women. Memes about these particular books and the culture of those that like to read them. And it's, yeah, sort of been where I found my own unique little space, which has been really cool.
Literature trends seem to be coming in waves in recent years. We had dystopian in the 2010s, and now the romantasy fad. Your account focuses on the “Good for Her” genre. I’ve heard it called a couple different things – Weird Girl Lit, Crazy Girl Lit, Unhinged Lit. You wrote a great Substack post on it, too. What is this genre exactly?
I would describe the "Good for Her" genre as being a genre where women, typically, are able to exact the revenge that they deserve. It's mostly female or queer protagonists, and they act out and behave in ways that is deemed morally unacceptable in polite society. The types of books that you might find – or the types of authors in the genre – particularly are the likes of Eliza Clark, who wrote Boy Parts, Penance…a short story collection, She's Always Hungry. Ottessa Moshfegh is the freaking GOAT2 I'm obsessed with her. Miranda July's latest All Fours I would say falls into the genre, even though it's not bloody and gory, it's certainly not a revenge. But that main female character, or main queer character, definitely behaves in ways that would definitely turn a few heads in today's society.
What do you think the genre might say about where we’re at in society right now?
I think the prevalence of it is definitely due in part to – the world is a dark place at the moment. It's a really depressing time to be alive, if I'm honest. And there's something about reading about these characters exacting that revenge or getting the justice that they deserve, or just saying and doing the things that we all fantasize about doing but would never actually carry out ourselves in real life.
There is a certain catharsis to be found in reading about these types of characters. Almost like a sense of freedom or a permission slip to be a little weird and unhinged ourselves when we're exposed to literature about characters who behave in those types of ways. Stereotypically, female characters and queer characters are always expected to behave a certain way, and it is so freeing to see them being gross and dirty and yuck and crazy, and how comforting it is to see women represented in a different light in today's fiction.
This might be a hard question, but what are some of your favorite books from the genre recently? I read My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh last year, and I’m still thinking about it. I’m also currently reading Bunny by Mona Awad, and it’s taking me on a journey.
My favorite books from the genre recently is a really hard – so hard – question. They're all different. I think they all speak to some different aspect of what it's like to exist in a patriarchy. But my favorite is probably Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh. Not for the faint of heart, and she's quite controversial. People find her writing to be, can be, quite gross or weird, but that's why I like it, because her characters are so real. She goes to places that we wouldn't dare go in her depictions of these characters who have been through some shit are so fascinating to me. I just love it. I just absolutely love Eileen’s character arc. That is probably my absolute favorite.
An absolute classic is We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, probably like one of the OG3 ‘Good for Her’ authors, I'd say. It is a classic, so that style of writing is not for everybody, but I feel like we wouldn't have Ottessa without Shirley Jackson, so definitely one to read. Of course, Bunny. Bunny is probably, definitely one of the greatest of all time. The first time I read Bunny, I didn't like it. I think I gave it three stars, and I was like, I don't get it. But over the course of, like, a month after I finished reading it, I just couldn't stop thinking about it, and it just kept percolating in my brain. And I returned to it, started reading more about it, researching, and honestly, I went back and gave it five stars because I was like, anything that does that to you is the sign of a really, really good book.
Nightbitch is really great, too. Although I have some thoughts about the ending, which I won't say, because I don't want to give spoilers, but a lot of other reviews sort of express the same sentiment that I feel about the ending of the book. But aside from that, it is very good, and I can't wait to see the movie…with Amy Adams. Amy Adams can do no wrong, she's amazing in everything she does.
I know you’re doing a reading challenge with your followers this year, 25 books in 2025. What’s that been like? I see you’re currently on book 6 out of 25, which is impressive, especially considering we’re still early in the year (Editor’s Note: Jen is on book 10 now!)
The Reading Challenge was really born out of a desire to remove the pressures and expectations of reading a shitload of books in favor of reading some of the bigger ones, the longer ones, the less glamorous ones, that have been on our bookshelves. That is one thing about Bookstagram and BookTok…there certainly is a bit of pressure to read an insane number of books every year, and I will say last year I read the highest number of books in a year that I've ever read before, I think. My final number was 112 or something like that, which is crazy, because honestly, normally, I average 45 to 60. That's typically been my personal challenge. But a lot of my reading habits last year changed. It's become my top hobby, basically everything I do in my spare time.
This year, my partner and I have actually sworn to go a year with television. I was actually inspired by Ottessa Moshfegh. She was doing My Year of De-Netflix-ication (even though she did confess to having already failed at that challenge) but that is our challenge, and so I'm hoping that will give me more space to read some of the big, heavy doorstoppers.4 That was sort of the primary driver of the of the challenge was there are so many massive 500 to 700 page books that we all want to read, but it's a huge time investment. When you've got the pressure of these 200 book reading challenges that some people do or massive, enormous reading goals, those books you just never kind of get to them. So this year, I really wanted to prioritize reading those big, long doorstoppers that don't necessarily fall into the “Good for Her” genre that I typically talk about on social.
So far, I've ticked off three from the book challenge – specifically from the book challenge – but I have read six books in total for the year. Two of those doors stoppers I've read this year, the first one is Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez, who's one of my favorite authors of all time. She's just so incredible. I just finished reading Demon Copperhead, which is also one of the greatest books I have ever, ever, ever read in my life. I loved it.
Some others I've got on my list, doorstoppers that I want to tackle, are Pachinko. That's coming next after I finish reading the The Lamb by Lucy Rose, which I'm reading at the moment. Also, I want to read the Parable series by Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower.
I basically wanted people to focus on reading books they already have, so the three categories in the challenge are doorstoppers, fiction you already own, and non-fiction that you want to read, because those big books and non-fiction are usually a couple of the ones that tend to fall off the priority list when you're trying to read a lot of books. Rather than, you know, perhaps clearing out your TBR5 or getting to the books you really want to read. That take a bit more time.
Where do you think book trends might be going in 2025 and beyond? Do you think the “Good for Her” genre will get more recognition?
What I would love to see more of is more queer “Good for Her” fiction. I think one book that comes to mind is Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin, which is an incredible, incredible dystopian horror that I think falls into “Good for Her” with transgender protagonists. I would love to see more of this, especially in the current political climate we're in, so I'm always looking for book recommendations that fall within this, and the more people can share and talk about it, the better.
I also want people to be reading banned books, talking about them. I keep seeing lot of content that that says “Reading is Political,” and I totally believe it is. The more we can read and educate ourselves, the more empowered we can become, and the more we can uplift these minority authors who are dealing with so much shit right now, the better we will all be in this amazing little industry.
Anything else you might want to add or other platforms people can find you on?
I do have some exciting developments coming this year. You'll be the first to hear about it, actually, but I am working on a podcast, and I have some truly remarkable guests lined up. I cannot even believe that they've agreed to speak to me. So that's very, very exciting. And stay tuned, because I will be sharing more information about that on Instagram and Substack over the next few months.
My weekly roundup:
🎶 What I’m Listening To: “Vampire Empire” by Big Thief
🎞️ What I’m Watching: Arcane S2E3
🔎 What I’m Reading: 🤫
📱 What I’m Scrolling: Is a photoshopped picture of Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo at the Grammys going around?
⚠️ What’s On My Radar: Chappell Roan setting boundaries paid off
Read the full Gen Z Dictionary here.
Romantasy: A combination of the “romance” and “fantasy” genre
GOAT: Greatest Of All Time
OG: The original version of something, usually superior to its successors
Doorstoppers: 500+ page books
TBR: “To Be Read” list