Women are collapsing right and left on the covers of novels. I was first drawn to the trend by the humorous image on the cover of Emily Nemen’s Clutch, wherein a smartly-dressed woman is lying prone, immobile. If you love a women-pushing-forty-behaving-badly romp or you dig novels with rom-com wittiness minus the tropes, this despairing friend group is for you.
It seems the Australians were way ahead of us in the fainting covers trend, as discussed in a 2022 article by Rafqa Touma in the Guardian. In the early 2020s, the Aussies lead the charge on images of women who had had enough, who were giving up, as it were. While we here in the states may be feeling, collectively, that yearning to collapse under the pressure of a ramped-up daily life post-pandemic, only in 2025 did our publishing industry start portraying that angst front and center.
From the Guardian article, I found the beautiful, disturbing Sorrow and Bliss, which is about a woman suffering with mental illness. The narrator presents herself as a wry, sardonic wife who is never satisfied. Through sharp prose and cutting dialogue, Meg Mason gives us a gorgeous portrait of a person struggling sans diagnosis. This book is for lovers of Sally Rooney or Meg Wolitzer. Interestingly, there are different versions of exasperated women on the British vs. the American cover. I think I prefer the painterly, domestic version.
Do these images make you want to spend some time on the couch? Here’s a suggestion for you: Nicola Dinan’s Disappoint Me, published in 2025. The novel’s protagonist, Max, is an Asian American trans woman (as is Dinan) with the cutting wit of a millennial. She’s put up with more than enough trans-phobia and is speaking out. The novel is an edgy study in relationships and gender identity. Interestingly, the UK cover portrays no collapse at all, only a red balloon nailed to a wall. Deflation, none-the-same.
For more millennial ennui, check out Spanish author Beatriz Serrano’s Discontent, originally published in Spain in 2023 then in English in 2025. Marisa, a prescription drug-addled, successful “creative” at an ad agency, can’t stand her job or really anything about the life she’s built around it. She pawns work off to her interns so she can scroll on YouTube or visit her favorite museum, seeking solace for her existential angst in the art of Hieronymous Bosch. Things quickly unravel for Marisa on a woodland company retreat where she can no longer hide behind her illusions. Discontent is a sharp, funny novel-length rant about the growing pains of adulthood.
Some might argue that Nicola Maye Goldberg’s protagonist in Other Women and Other Stories is not, in fact, collapsing on the cover, but is looking at something—a dropped contact lens? a tiny spider? – on the bathroom floor. This intimate portrait of a young woman who is spurned by a married man, spawns reviews from both lovers and haters alike. It’s not a plot-driven novella, but a slow burn of angst. The other stories in the collection also delve in detail into women’s discontent and insecurities.
Essayist Bonnie Friedman’s first novel, Don’t Stop, is worth picking up just to immerse yourself in the prose. In it, we meet a 41-year-old woman who has a sudden, transformative sexual awakening just as she is on the eve of achieving literary success. The onset of an affair with a cruel, sadistic man sparks an implosion in her married and professional life that she seems powerless to curb, forcing her to reckon with who she thinks she is and what she truly wants.
The books on this list are described as darkly comic, and they all live up to that description. There’s no denying there’s some humor in the posture of defeat, as long as we get up again and carry on, just as the protagonists in these novels do.
~ posted by Tavi