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Girl Reading

by Katie Ward (Goodreads Author)

3.39 of 5 stars 3.39 · rating details · 967 ratings · 185 reviews

Seven portraits. Seven artists. Seven girls and women reading.A young orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena. An artist's servant girl in seventeenth-century Amsterdam snatches a moment away from her work to lose herself in tales of knights and battles. An eighteenth century female painter completes a portrait of a deceased poetess for her lover...more

Hardcover, 337 pages

Published February 7th 2012 by Scribner (first published May 1st 2011)

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Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

Art & Artists in Fiction

191st out of 305 books — 485 voters

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Sep 23, 2011 Kinga rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was an excellent book and you might wonder why I haven't given it five stars. Many people have given it five stars and they are right. I, however, am mean and stingy with my stars. Girl Reading is Katie Ward's first book, and I am quite certain that she will give me some five star material soon. She is probably writing something five-staresque as we speak.

Girl Reading is really a collection of short stories posing as a novel. I think I can see a trend there - does it mean that publishers ar...more

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Apr 09, 2013 Izzy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book took me forever to finish but it was so worth it. Structurally, it’s a collection of stories throughout the years from the 14th century to 2060 (ish) that all share one common theme; these stories were inspired by one or more pieces of art containing a girl and a book. I LOVED Ward’s style of writing; she never uses quotation marks which, while making it difficult to differentiate between thought and speech, actually makes it feel like you were there watching each scene take place. I r...more

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Mar 28, 2013 Raj K Lal rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Katie Ward writes about seven portraits and artists, and the lives of seven girls and women reading, all living in seven different time periods between 1333 and 2060. Each world is different but so well created that I felt as though I was there, witnessing the lives of the characters created by the writer. There is a depth to the writing which brings worlds and people alive, makes them real and believable. There are clever, subtle links which tie the stories together. Yet each story feels like a...more

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Jan 11, 2013 S rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Original review at my blog, Writing by Numbers, here.

This so-called novel is really a collection of short stories, which in turn reads rather like a talented writer engaging in a creative writing exercise. Nevertheless, it’s a pleasant and well-crafted read. Ward has created seven stories that span space and time, each based on a piece of art featuring a woman reading. She sets her chapters in chronological order, beginning in Renaissance Siena and ending in an imagined future. In between, she...more

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Jan 07, 2013 Alyson rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Oh dear, where to start? After two chapters this was going to be a one star rating, and I was about to abandon the book, but, the next story was better so I stuck at it. As many other reviewers on here have said, I feel misled by this being called a 'novel' on the back. It's not. It is a book with six independent short stories, and one final short story which provides one thread which connects the six to the 7th, (but not the six to each other).

I don't feel the author's writing/research/knowledg...more

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Oct 20, 2012 Georgiana Derwent rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found it really difficult to decide on the appropriate rating for this book, swerving anywhere between three and five stars. When I first heard about it - seven linked stories on the subject of pieces of art showing a girl reading - I was torn between two conflicting thoughts: "wow, sounds like a great and unusual concept," and "sounds a bit overly pretentious, the author must be going all out to get her Booker Prize nomination." Having read it, I think that both of these thoughts are true to...more I found it really difficult to decide on the appropriate rating for this book, swerving anywhere between three and five stars. When I first heard about it - seven linked stories on the subject of pieces of art showing a girl reading - I was torn between two conflicting thoughts: "wow, sounds like a great and unusual concept," and "sounds a bit overly pretentious, the author must be going all out to get her Booker Prize nomination." Having read it, I think that both of these thoughts are true to some degree. It is a good concept, and when it works well, it works really well. On the other hand, at times it felt as though the author was trying a little hard and not quite hitting the target. I read some reviews beforehand and found it a bit silly the way so many people were going on about lack of speech marks, but I think that actually sums up the author's attempts to do everything a bit differently, with hit and miss results. It took me quite a while to get through the book and whilst I generally enjoyed it whilst I was making the effort to read it, I felt no compulsion to pick it up again once I'd put it down - I really had to force myself.

Part of the problem is that the quality of the sections varied quite a bit. Two - one about Victorian psychics, one about a woman working for an MP in the modern day - were genuinely some of the best things I've read in ages, and make me feel really harsh about only giving three stars. But most of the other segments, whilst certainly not awful, just didn't grip me. If this were meant to be a book of short stories, the variation in quality wouldn't matter so much - readers could just dip in and out. But the author has stated that this is meant to be read as a coherent novel and therefore it's more of a problem.

I'm certainly open to treating books with only loosely connected stories as complete novels - Cloud Atlas does a similar thing and is one of my top five favourite ever reads; The Rain Before it Falls has each chapter be about a one picture and I really enjoyed that too. But both those books somehow felt more complete and connected. For most of the book, the only thing holding it together is the rather arbitrary connection of "portraits of women reading," which simultaneously make each story not have enough to do with the next to create a clear message or an overarching plot; and a little too similar in both theme and style to keep readers interested. (There's little of Cloud Atlas's brilliant playing around with different genres or writing formats). At the end there's a sort of twist that provides one explanation for how the stories link together but I found it utterly forced and unconvincing.

In conclusion, this is certainly not a terrible book - it's a good idea that is reasonably well executed and it's well written. But at the same time, because of how it drags and how "try-hard" it is in parts I can't quite recommend it as a whole. If you can borrow the book, I would however recommend you read the two stories I mention above. I also fully intend to read the author's next book, in the hope that by then her obvious writing talent will have come to more consistent fruition. If she could write a whole novel as good as the two great sections of this book I think it would be a real classic, but this simply isn't.(less)

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Aug 08, 2012 The Commuting Bookworm rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Girl Reading by Katie Ward

The Blurb on the back tells us: An Orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in Medieval Siena, and an artist servant girl in 17th century Amsterdam snatches a moment away from her work to lose herself in tales of knights and battles. In a Victorian photography studio, a woman holds a book that she barely acknowledges while she waits for the exposure and in Shoreditch bar in 2008 a woman reading catches the eye of a young man who takes her picture.

What is perhap...more

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Jul 29, 2012 CuteBadger rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I’ve been putting off writing about my views of this book as I really didn’t enjoy it and only finished it because I was sent it to review. When I looked online after reading it I found that I’m definitely in a minority as lots of readers, both famous and anonymous, are hailing it as the best thing since the literary equivalent of sliced bread.

I really can’t agree, as the emotion I felt most often while reading it was irritation. For a start it’s described as a novel, but it really isn’t one. I...more I’ve been putting off writing about my views of this book as I really didn’t enjoy it and only finished it because I was sent it to review. When I looked online after reading it I found that I’m definitely in a minority as lots of readers, both famous and anonymous, are hailing it as the best thing since the literary equivalent of sliced bread.

I really can’t agree, as the emotion I felt most often while reading it was irritation. For a start it’s described as a novel, but it really isn’t one. It’s a collection of short stories linked by common themes and in a way that only becomes fully apparent in the final section. The structure of the book means that only a snapshot of each character’s story is presented in their chapter and (presumably) that the reader isn’t meant to understand everything or be bothered that she doesn’t find out what happens to the characters in a wider sense. As the reason for these snapshots doesn’t become fully apparent until the end of the book, while reading the earlier chapters I had the sense of an author who was deliberately being high-handed and who didn’t care whether I understood what was going or not.

Giving the reader these portraits of what was happening during a particular short time frame means that we observe each section much more coolly than we would in a “proper” novel. There’s no point in liking anyone or wanting to know more about the background or the society portrayed as there just isn’t any more. This means that the narrative tension that normally pulls me through a book is gone – there’s no point in wanting to know what happens next as the author isn’t going to tell me.

Petty it may be, but a major source of irritation was the lack of inverted commas which made it much harder to follow who was talking at any particular point in the dialogue. Surely the current grammatical convention has served novelists well for hundreds of years? Whatever the author’s reason for not going down this route, it comes across to me as a type of arrogance and contempt for her readers. The same is true of the lack of explanation of some references within the book to particular terms used during the era in which the particular sections were set. To me, this seems to be the author saying “If you’re too ignorant to know what these mean then you’re too stupid to bother with and I don’t care about you”.

Particular sections of Girl Reading reminded me of Tracey Chevalier, Sarah Waters (2 chapters) and Margaret Atwood. The Bloomsbury Set types in the chapter set in 1916 were also so familiar that I was sure I’d read about them before. All this meant that I didn’t feel I was reading something original and made many of the sections feel like pastiches of other authors rather than original work.

I’m also not entirely sure what the “novel” was trying to say, as to me it appears to demonstrate that, despite hundreds of years of history and increasing female empowerment, the author feels that women’s lives come down to little more than the relationships they have (in the main) with men, how attractive we are as women, and having babies.

Girl Reading feels more like a literary exercise than a living breathing novel, so I couldn’t feel any attachment to it. When I read a novel I need to be engaged and taken out of my own life into someone else’s, whether I like the characters or hate them. I don’t read in order to admire the cleverness of the author who appears to be writing for herself and forgetting that she has an audience.
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Jul 26, 2012 Camelacuison rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The book was awarded 3 stars, however this was not because of a luke warm appreciation. Like any short term relationship (it took me about a month to read because of reasons x and y) it kept pulling me between annoyance and true love.
There are moments of sheer delight, where the sentences are so beautifully constructed in a moment of spontaneous stupidity i thought about getting them tattooed to my arm, but then on the other hand WHERE IN GOD'S NAME ARE THE SPEECH MARKS?? Also the jumps in the...more

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Jul 08, 2012 Tali rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was one of those books that I really loved the idea of and I thought I would really enjoy all of the short stories contained within. Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether I expected too much, but I found this merely to be ok. While I loved the concept behind the collection - each story is based around an image of a woman reading - I found the lack of sympathetic characters rather disappointing and the whole book ended up being a little bit depressing. The collection has its highlights, in par...more

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Jun 10, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really enjoyed this, I was completely immersed and when I had finished the seventh section I went back to check out the links and connections I thought I could see. I haven't read a book that has engaged me this much for ages.

I see from earlier reviews that others have struggled with the lack of punctuation and have found the jump from one story to another rather disruptive. I didn't have either of those problems, I think I have developed a style of reading for books like this (based on readin...more

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May 06, 2012 Mark Patton rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, new-releases

Katie Ward's debut novel is a book of extraordinary scope and vision. Like Cloud Atlasor If on a winter's night a traveler, it consists of a number of stories, seemingly separate, but in fact intricately related, and in such a way that the book as a whole is very much greater than the sum of its parts. In this case the theme which links them is of an image of a girl or woman reading a text. There are seven chapters, eached based around the production of an image by an artist (Simone Martini Annu...more

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May 03, 2012 Shannon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

Some books are quiet books. Gilead comes to mind. As does Jim the Boy. These books don't bowl you over or yank you into the storyline. Instead they slowly, quietly and persistently invite you into their world. Girl Reading is a quiet book. In it, Katie Ward takes you into the world behind seven works of art. Each world is fully fleshed out. Each character different from the last, yet engaging. Each time I left one world and moved on to the next, I wanted more. I like a book that leaves me wantin...more

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Aug 02, 2011 Susan Anderson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

In Girl Reading, a debut novel, Katie Ward paints seven portraits of girls reading—their lives, their conflicts, their passions, their griefs. The author’s prose is rich, her syntax spare, exact, sometimes provocative, often surprising, usually delightful.

From the start we are caught up in the characters, the stories of young women who read. We watch with them. We weep with them. We wonder, what comes next. In short, most of the time we can’t turn the page fast enough, except for those passages...more In Girl Reading, a debut novel, Katie Ward paints seven portraits of girls reading—their lives, their conflicts, their passions, their griefs. The author’s prose is rich, her syntax spare, exact, sometimes provocative, often surprising, usually delightful.

From the start we are caught up in the characters, the stories of young women who read. We watch with them. We weep with them. We wonder, what comes next. In short, most of the time we can’t turn the page fast enough, except for those passages we need to ponder.

On its skeletal level, the work yolks together two disciplines—painting and writing. As the painter uses tempera, oil, camera, or video to paint a picture that tells a story, so Ms. Ward uses words to effect the same. Seven stories—each one evocative of a unique age and its overriding dilemma; and the characters, reflective of their time, are so full of flesh and blood that you expect to see them emerging from the spine. Seven stories of the human race flow from and ping back to seven images. In the end, a synchronicity: the last section, which I had to read a couple of times before I understood, knitting together all parts into a whole, and, with a start, we discover the story at its heart, the unity of the work.

The reader draws to a deeper understanding of the early and late Renaissance, the Victorian era, the twentieth century, the present, and beyond. The world is seen from characters on the fringe, either because of their class or beliefs. Themes include humanity’s inability to see, to know the truth, given the social constructs and limitations which inhibit understanding. And the core image of a girl reading in this context is ironic.

The book is a must for all serious readers interested in history and in the current direction of literary fiction.

One comment: the cover says the book is available as an e-book. But, alas, I found out, not for us North American customers, at least not when I ordered the paperback from Amazon a few weeks ago (Virago Press, 2011). But no matter. When I read an e-book I like, I buy the real thing, and now I have it. Physically, the book is a joy, not too heavy to hold. It’s typeset in Horley, a pleasing font set in a very readable size—so crisp compared to e-ink, which has, let’s face it, a long way to go before it approaches the genuine article.
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Jun 02, 2011 David Hebblethwaite rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In Girl Reading, Katie Ward imagines the stories behind a number of portraits of girls and women reading; the portraits range in past time from Simone Martini’s Annunciation (1333) to a photograph on Flickr in 2008, and a concluding chapter set in 2060 provides context for the previous six. Ward has a distinctive writing style that creates a strong atmosphere for each of the time periods, and allows her to weave in details very subtly. I’ll single out her portrayal of Gwen – a girl in love with...more

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Oct 30, 2012 Girl with her Head in a Book rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, picture-book, 2012-challenge, must-love-history, time-travel, girls-are-awesome

This is Katie Ward's first novel and I was still thinking about it three days after I had finished it, so I think it's fair to say that she's done a decent job. Strictly speaking, it doesn't seem to be a novel. There are seven disconnected stories, but they are linked together in the final chapter which is set in the future ... still I have a wee suspicion that somebody's publisher very much wanted to push it as a novel rather than a collection of short stories which is after all the Cinderella...more

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Aug 10, 2012 Bethany rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

This isn't a negative review. I did enjoy Girl Reading, but like most short story collections there are bits you love and bits you couldn't care less about. Many reviews promised a link at the end of the novel, however, so I persevered with every story, but unfortunately when Girl Reading peaks with "Unknown, For Pleasure, 1916", it begins going downhill at an alarming rate and just doesn't recover.

It was the sixth story, "Immaterialism, Reader in a Shoreditch Bar, 2008" where the novel took a d...more

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May 14, 2012 Kirsty rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: purchased-2012, read-2012, short-stories

I wanted to love this book, I really did. The premise was a wonderful one and I was intrigued to see Ward's interpretations of a series of different pictures. Whilst the lack of apostrophes to denote speech throughout worked well at first, it did become a little annoying after a while. Some of the stories were interesting and promising in their scope, but I struggled to get through others. I'm glad I've read it, but it's not a book which I'd pick up again in a hurry.

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Mar 26, 2012 Ali rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Having seen a lot of chat about this book through various online sources – and read some interesting reviews, I managed to catch the last twenty minutes of The TV book club programme which featured an item about this novel. Everyone was very enthusiastic about it and so I bought the book from Amazon that same evening. I have to say however that I don’t like the cover art of this latest edition – I have seen the art of the earlier edition and like it much more – I know that doesn’t or shouldn’t a...more Having seen a lot of chat about this book through various online sources – and read some interesting reviews, I managed to catch the last twenty minutes of The TV book club programme which featured an item about this novel. Everyone was very enthusiastic about it and so I bought the book from Amazon that same evening. I have to say however that I don’t like the cover art of this latest edition – I have seen the art of the earlier edition and like it much more – I know that doesn’t or shouldn’t add or detract anything from the book – but it does have an effect. A friend of mine at work who has already read and enjoyed the novel ‘Girl reading’ told me how she managed to source an American hardback edition of the book through Abebooks and I believe it featured some of the art work that inspired the novel – I had immediate book envy.
All of that is an aside – now about the book.
Girl Reading is told in seven stories – each story is based around artwork which features girls or women reading. Thus each chapter is the story behind the art. These are fictional tales of course – Katie Ward has picked some wonderful images on which to base her novel, images which inspired her beautiful stories. I have seen a number of reviews which seem to debate whether this is in fact a collection of short stories rather than a novel, the final story/chapter however links the seemingly unconnected stories together in an extraordinary and unexpected way. Whether or not the book is a novel or short stories – for me is actually unimportant – the writing is lovely, the stories memorable and wholly satisfying.
In the first story set in 1333 – Laura a young orphan is persuaded to pose for a Renaissance painter. She is befriended by the artist’s wife, and we learn something of Laura’s life – and her hopes for the future. In 1668 Amsterdam a deaf mute servant girl is the inspiration for a painting as she snatches a moment to look through a book of her mistresses. In 1775 a female portrait painter is summoned to finish a picture by a grief stricken countess. 1864 and a Victorian photography studio is at the heart of the story, adult twin sisters and spiritualism make for an unusual tale. 1916 – At the country house of an academic, a young artist and conscientious objector is the subject of a young girls day dreams. 2008 in a Shoreditch bar a young woman is photographed reading and the picture posted on flickr. In the not too distant future of 2060 – these stories are brought together in a not improbable futuristic vision.
The writing is gorgeous, the style of each narrative beautifully constructed to suit the period in which the story is set. Each chapter manages to be a whole story – the worlds and characters portrayed are distinct and complete. My favourite stories – although I liked them all a great deal – were the first three. If there was one story which grabbed me less it was the one from 2008. The futuristic story at the end is extremely clever and brings all the stories together.
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Apr 01, 2013 Sterlingcindysu rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 09, 2012 Lottie Chase rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The old saying goes ‘you don’t miss something until it is gone’. In this book I really missed speech-marks. Call me lazy but I quite like to be able to identify who is talking by a slight flick of ink on a page. Speech-marks are important and whether you are trying to be literary or challenge your readers you should understand that readers have grown up with speech-marks and are not about to have them whisked away like some forlorn apostrophe I could mention.

I did struggle with Girl Reading and...more

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Aug 10, 2012 Ian McLoughlin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For some reason I completely missed the initial launch of this book and was unaware of its existence until I happily stumbled upon it in my local Waterstones.

The concept - that of seven seemingly unconnected chapters, each based upon depictions of girls or women reading - intrigued me; I dipped in to the first chapter which was based upon a fourteenth-century painting by Simone Martini and was instantly hooked. The writing had a deceptively simple feel yet with an underlying power that I, for o...more

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May 13, 2011 BookAmbler rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have met the author through BookCrossing so I was a little nervous about reading this book on account of Katie and I once disagreed completely on The Accidental by Ali Smith. I was concerned that Girl Reading was going to be a book I hated! Also, although it is hailed as 'seven portraits', to me it's seven short stories; I must be a lazy reader because I find short stories too much like hard work and rarely read them. I was finding the 'girl reading' theme very tenuous until the final story wh...more

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Apr 03, 2012 Caroline rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really struggled with this one. I wouldn't call it a novel but instead a tenuously-related collection of short stories, each of which a snapshot of a particular moment in the characters' lives.

I'm not really a short story person, I suppose. I don't enjoy dismissing one set of recently-introduced chracters for another group. I also realise that I need a strong plot to keep me interested!

The lack of speech marks and associated punctuation was a real put-off for me. I often had to trace back lin...more

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Feb 13, 2012 Kristin rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-on-books, lit-fic, historical-fiction, read-in-2012, brit-fic, short-stories, reviewed

Okay, I really liked the concept. The writing was quite good. I liked how the stories weren't really connected, yet every now and then a painting from one story was mentioned in another story (and they're all mentioned in the last story, which takes place in the future). I liked that there were some real paintings, then some fictional photographs, which were based on real carte de vistes and Flikr photos. And I liked how there was a futuristic story to tie things together. But in the end, I just...more

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Mar 30, 2012 Richard Pierce rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Girl Reading is one of those books which leaves you wanting more, leaves you feeling bereft when you've read the last word on the last page. The quality of the writing, the creation of so many different atmospheres, the evocation of such a vast range of different eras - all these combine to make this an astounding debut novel. But even that is not praise enough for this book - it's quite simply one of the best books I've ever read.

Literary fiction at its best lets you forget who you are, stops y...more

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Nov 19, 2012 Pat rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book grew on me. I started out not being sure if it was for me and ended up not being able to put it down. It is basically 7 short stories with a common theme - pictures of girls reading. in each story you get to know something about the woman in the picture and how the picture came to be made. The final story is set in the future in a world where art works have been removed from public view and galleries just have facsimiles of the real thing. In this future world people can interact with...more

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May 01, 2013 Vicki rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: paperbacks

This book is a collection of short stories which all tie together in the final story of the book (or don't depending on how you interpret the final tale I guess). It takes you on a journey through time on the production of images (paintings and photographs) of women reading.
I didn't like the first tale very much, and I honestly thought this was going to be the trend for the whole book. However, I absolutely loved tales two, three and four and by then I was hooked.
My only real issue with the bo...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Nigel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club, 21st-century-novels

I don't agree with the reviewers who have considered this a series of short stories. It is more a treatise of art versus technology and our interaction with both, as both forms advance - paintings/photographs/Internet/interactive mediums. From the artist in the first chapter pondering the political implications of the screen he is to paint for the cathedral in Sienna to the hastily taken photograph in a pub, each artwork seems simpler and quicker to make and with less thought. Does this give it...more

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Jun 01, 2012 Jane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I admired many things about this novel - the intensity of the language, the vivid imagery and strong characterisation, the way the unusual structure stretched conventional boundaries - but what I enjoyed most was the exhilarating sense of having travelled, imaginatively, far and wide, through history, and into the future. With a quality of strangeness which is at first unsettling but becomes magnetic, the novel explores human imagination. In many ways, the form of the novel echoes its content.

I...more

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About Katie Ward

Katie Ward was born in Somerset in 1979. She has worked in the public and voluntary sectors, including at a women’s refuge and for a Member of Parliament. She took a career break in order to write her debut novel, Girl Reading, after coming across an article about a book of portraits of women and girls reading.

Girl Reading is published by Scribner (US) and Virago (UK).

Katie lives in Suffolk with h...more

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