WOMEN’S PRIZE: WORST TO BEST

After tackling all of the Booker Prize winners, I took on the decidedly less arduous task of rattling through the winners of the Women's Prize for Fiction, which as of writing (2025) has only half the number of winners as the Booker.

Formed in the mid-90s in direct response to the lack of female authors on several recent Booker Prize shortlists, the Women's Prize is in that sense inextricably tied to the Booker. However, since then it has gone on to become very much its own thing, carving out an identity over and beyond simply showcasing writing by women.

For my money, the Women's Prize has (especially in recent years) been a little more open-minded in its selections than the Booker, tending to include more books that straddle the literary/genre divide, as well as books that seem to have a little bit more fun (while by-and-large still not losing the essential seriousness of purpose that tends to characterise whatever 'literary' is).

As such, this was an enjoyable task. Like the Booker winners, there were no books that I strongly disliked. I loved the majority, liked almost all and was on the fence about just a couple.

It's taken me a little while to get around to pulling together my final ranking (although the scores are those I gave at the time of reading in each case, unadjusted), but here it is. In customary fashion, I have ranked from 'worst' to best. Opinions are mine, all mine, and not intended to be objective or authoritative.

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Intro | 30-21 | 20-11 | 10-1