Bookshelf · TV HeroinesLive list

Fleabag.

Fleabag · 2016–2019

The fourth wall is broken; the bookshelf is messier still. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s reading list is grief, sex, theology, and Mary Oliver.

"This is a love story." So is the reading list.

6 booksCurated · cited · cross-referenced

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The shelf, decoded

Why this list.

Fleabag does not show many books. What she shows instead is the interior life of someone who has read too many of them — late-night anxious literary consumption translated into deadpan camera-glances. The list below is built half from on-screen evidence (the Hot Priest’s gift, the books visible in the café) and half from the texts Phoebe Waller-Bridge has cited in interviews about Fleabag’s grief, faith, and self-loathing.

The reading list

6 books for Fleabag.

  1. Cover of The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts
    No. 01On screen

    The Wisdom of Insecurity

    Alan Watts

    The book the Hot Priest gives her. A small green hardback about living without certainty — handed to a woman who has spent two seasons performing certainty about everything.

    CitationSeason 2, Episode 4

  2. Cover of Bluets by Maggie Nelson
    No. 02Character fit

    Bluets

    Maggie Nelson

    Grief in 240 numbered fragments. The closest book in print to what Fleabag does to the camera.

    CitationCharacter-fit

  3. Cover of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
    No. 03Creator cited

    Mrs Dalloway

    Virginia Woolf

    A woman planning a party while privately unraveling. The structural model for the entire show.

    CitationCreator-cited (Phoebe Waller-Bridge interviews)

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  5. Cover of Devotions by Mary Oliver
    No. 04Character fit

    Devotions

    Mary Oliver

    The anti-cynicism antidote. If the Hot Priest had given her a poetry book, it would have been this.

    CitationCharacter-fit

  6. Cover of The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
    No. 05Character fit

    The Year of Magical Thinking

    Joan Didion

    The unspoken book under Fleabag’s entire arc. Loss, displacement, the absurd practical work of being the survivor.

    CitationCharacter-fit

  7. Cover of A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
    No. 06On screen

    A Confederacy of Dunces

    John Kennedy Toole

    The kind of book that lives in the Fleabag café — left behind by a customer, never returned, read in slivers between failed dates.

    CitationSet dressing

Closing note

Read in sequence, this is a list about the difference between irony and devotion. Fleabag spends two seasons trying not to mean anything she says. The books refuse to let her.

Your turn

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