If language is a patriarchal construct, what is it to write of a woman’s consciousness? Here, through an exploration of narrative voice in two contemporary literary novels - Marie Darrieussecq’s ‘A brief stay with the living’, and her own work, ‘Dissection’ - Jacinta Halloran makes a compelling argument for the privileging of some narrative styles over others in the literary representation of women’s inner lives. The techniques of both internal and narrated monologue and communal narration are explained and rigorously examined with reference to the work of eminent narratologists and literary theorists, including Julia Kristeva, Mikhail Bakhtin, Dorrit Cohn and Susan Sniader Lanser. This scholarly yet engaging text will appeal to those readers who appreciate the nuances of narrative voice and have an interest in the literary representation of women’s inner experience.