Agree with everything you have to say here about Austen - most of these comments seem to have some kind of Merchant Ivory notion of her as a kind of 'heritage' writer rather than as an astute critic.
yeah i read plenty of female writers, too many to mention here but I must mention Fred Vargas as someone who is doing excellent work in the much maligned detective genre.
Anything you would recommend, Ripley?
yeah I get the feeling people are responding to the movies, which have very little to do with the books.
three of the books I listed except for Camara Laye are ladies
Pat Barker is totally fucking incredible, especially her trilogy about world war I (Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road). Her other stuff is harsh and beautiful and spare but really really depressing.
Free Enterprise by MIchelle Cliff is a great story of the JOhn Brown /harper's ferry slave uprising..
Angela Carter is sort of magical realist except much earthier and funnier - Nights at the Circus is my favorite. One of her earliest works I think was a feminist reading of De Sade, so you know she's got a sense of humor and a perverse take on things
I think Alias Grace is the best thing I've read of Margaret Atwood, awesome use of unreliable narrators, set in the early ish years of canada as a british colony (something I know little about), quite funny in a dark and vicous sort of way.
I enjoyed Zadie Smith's White Teeth although it's a bit cartoony - made me miss London a Lot. For middlebrow (I guess) Meera Syal is a hoot.
Ahab's Wife by Sena Naslund is amazing and gives an account of the intellectual scene at the times leading up to the era that MOby DIck takes place. Despite the title (or in response to it) she begins with "Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last" which sets it up nicely.
oh hell I'm on Librarything just look for djripley.