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The Bitch Posseby Martha O'Connor
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:These are the confessions of the Bitch Posse. Cherry, Rennie, and Amy were outcasts, rebels, and dreamers. And their friendship was so all-encompassing that some would call it dangerous. This is the story of three women — as seniors in high school and as women in their mid-thirties — who formed a bond in order to survive the pitfalls and perils of their lives.
In the present day, one of them is a wife and mother-to-be, trying to live a "normal" life. One of them is a writer who engages in a number of self-destructive relationships. And one of them is in a mental hospital — and has been ever since that one fateful night fifteen years ago, when a heart-wrenching betrayal and the unraveling of relationships led them to a point of no return, where their actions triggered unimaginable consequences. These secrets have torn them apart while inextricably binding them to one another. What happened to them? And can they survive their shared history, even today? The Bitch Posse is an anthem for friendships that defy society's approval or disapproval. It's a novel of secrets, courage, sacrifice, and hope against the odds. It is both a journey back to being a girl on the verge of adulthood, and a journey forward, showing how the events of our past can unearth the best in us today. Dare to jump in. Review:"'You Have Now Entered a Chick-Lit-Free Zone,' O'Connor's dark, scabrous debut warns. Given the sassy title and the familiar subject matter of female friendship, readers should be forgiven if they expect Bridget Jones — but O'Conner's heroines resemble that lovable Brit like leopards resemble kittens. The story focuses on three friends, Cherry, Amy and Rennie, as high school seniors and as women in their mid-30s. Compelled by miserable home lives to form the Bitch Posse as teenagers, the three girls ricochet dangerously through their last year of high school, sharing a passionate, almost sinister bond until a terrible secret rips them apart. Still damaged — and separated — by the unspeakable event, the three live equally wretched lives as adults, Cherry in a mental institution, Rennie as a promiscuous failed writer and Amy in a loveless marriage. After pages of vodka, cocaine, 'fucking' and 'cutting' (in both past and present narratives), the friends' terrible secret finally comes to light, though it reveals logistical and thematic gaps in the narrative. '[H]er past is like a sore that won't ever heal, memories are spurting at her like blood and she can't close the wound' characterizes the level of emotional complexity attained in this heavy-handed novel, but the story fascinates even as it repels. Agent, Mary Evans. (May)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:"[U]nabashedly satisfying....[A] thrilling ride and a searing look into the lives of three girls turned women as they scratch, scrape, and slash their way through existence....The Bitch Posse is one chick novel you are sure not to forget." BookReporter.com
Review:"Not for the faint of heart, this debut novel will keep readers glued to the very last page." Library Journal
Review:"The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants it ain't. Like the young women of that young-adult fantasy, the members of The Bitch Posse also bond. Only they bond with an irrevocable, terrifying difference in Martha O'Connor's unforgettable, dark first novel." San Francisco Chronicle
Review:"Compulsively readable...delicious and slightly macabre details of the mid-1980's alterna-teen culture." The Washington Post Book World
Review:"If The Bitch Posse were half as good as Helen Fielding's novels...O'Connor might have a right to such arrogance. But the truth is that she'd do well to adopt some of the qualities that make chick lit so popular: humor, maybe, or characters about whom the reader might actually care." Miami Herald
Review:"A sizzling page-turner." Cosmopolitan
Review:"The Bitch Posse is a riveting and emotionally charged read. No fluff here." Chicago Tribune
Review:"Astonishing and truly remarkable...tough, subtle, tense, authentic, and very beautiful. If this isn't really Alice Sebold, Donna Tartt, or Barbara Vine writing under a pseudonym, then Martha O'Connor is a huge new talent who is already about as good as it gets." Lee Child, author of The Enemy
Review:"O'Connor nails the intense, us-against-the-world, overcooked emotion that defines the friendship of teen girls and the druggy delirium of first, sexual love." The Cleveland Plain-Dealer
Review:"The fierce young heroines of Martha O'Connor's uncompromising novel team up in high school and head out into the night to raise hell — not knowing, of course, the infernal depths to which their anger and pain can take them. From the first the story of Rennie, Cherry, and Amy is eye-popping: a profane and unabashed account of a girls' pact to get out of the Midwest and get even with the small-town toss of the dice that's doomed them. Told in dramatic flash-like chapters, skimming back and forth through time, and allowing raw emotion to be its nerve-addled guide, The Bitch Posse is a debut worthy of Joyce Carol Oates. That is, O'Connor steals into Oates's bleak, erotically desolate territory by night to explore the pathology of adolescent loneliness and longing, along the way making full-fledged women of this compellingly capricious sister act. And in the end, it's lit — just so — by the glow of the dying fires of youth, and bitter with the taste of the aftermath ashes of a hard-won yet oddly hopeful wisdom." Edmund White, author of Fanny: A Fiction
Review:"The Bitch Posse is dark, poignant, and only too believable. Renny, Cherry, and Amy are strivers at school by day and connivers by night. Self-styled rebels without a clue, they are bound together in friendship. Little do they realize that there will come a day when their naive passions will lead them to a vicious mishap, blood that will stay on their hands for the rest of their lives. This is a book that will walk alongside you, and haunt your dreams, long after you turn the last page." Jacquelyn Mitchard, New York Times bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean and A Theory of Relativity
Review:"This is a novel that gets under the skin, a novel that cuts deep. Martha O'Connor has crafted a trio of unforgettable characters, young women so heart-wrenchingly alive, they burst from the page. The Bitch Posse has all the makings of a modern-day classic; it left me shaken, moved, and deeply grateful for the journey." Gayle Brandeis, author of The Book of Dead Birds and winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction
Review:"A nuanced and often disturbing consideration of the assets and liabilities of friendship and loyalty. Very brave mother-daughter book groups will do well to choose this novel!" Katharine Weber, author of Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
Synopsis:In this passionate tale, three high school friends are reunited after 15 years by a secret they hoped would never be revealed.
Synopsis:These are the confessions of The Bitch Posse. Cherry, Rennie, and Amy were outcasts, rebels, and dreamers. And their friendship was so all-encompassing that some would call it dangerous. This is the story of three women--as seniors in high school and as women in their mid-thirties--who formed a bond in order to survive the pitfalls and perils of their lives. Their secrets have torn them apart, while inextricably binding them to one another. hat happened to them? And can they survive their shared history, even today?
The Bitch Posse is an anthem for friendships that defy society's approval or disapproval. It's a novel of secrets, courage, sacrifice, and hope against the odds. It is both a journey back to being a girl on the verge of adulthood, and a journey forward, showing how the events of our past can unearth the best in us today.
Dare to jump in. "Compulsively readable." --The Washington Post "A riveting and emotionally charged read." --Chicago Tribune "Unforgettable, dark...The triumph of this novel consists in its compulsive readability...it feels great, it feels terrible, you want more, you shouldn't do more, you do more, it's over, it's not, it can never be over." --San Francisco Chronicle "A book that will walk alongside you, and haunt your dreams, long after you turn the last page." --Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean Synopsis:Extraordinary Praise for Martha O'Connor "The Bitch Posse is dark, poignant, and only too believable. Renny, Cherry, and Amy are strivers at school by day and connivers by night. Self-styled rebels without a clue, they are bound together in friendship. Little do they realize that there will come a day when their naive passions will lead them to a vicious mishap, blood that will stay on their hands for the rest of their lives. This is a book that will walk alongside you, and haunt your dreams, long after you turn the last page."---Jacquelyn Mitchard, New York Times bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean and A Theory of Relativity "The fierce young heroines of Martha O'Connor's uncompromising novel team up in high school and head out into the night to raise hell---not knowing, of course, the infernal depths to which their anger and pain can take them. From the first the story of Rennie, Cherry, and Amy is eye-popping: a profane and unabashed account of a girls' pact to get out of the Midwest and get even with the small-town toss of the dice that's doomed them. Told in dramatic flash-like chapters, skimming back and forth through time, and allowing raw emotion to be its nerve-addled guide, The Bitch Posse is a debut worthy of Joyce Carol Oates. That is, O'Connor steals into Oates's bleak, erotically desolate territory by night to explore the pathology of adolescent loneliness and longing, along the way making full-fledged women of this compellingly capricious sister act. And in the end, it's lit---just so---by the glow of the dying fires of youth, and bitter with the taste of the aftermath ashes of a hard-won yet oddly hopeful wisdom."---Edmund White, author of Fanny: A Fiction "This is a novel that gets under the skin, a novel that cuts deep. Martha O'Connor has crafted a trio of unforgettable characters, young women so heart-wrenchingly alive, they burst from the page. The Bitch Posse has all the makings of a modern-day classic; it left me shaken, moved, and deeply grateful for the journey."---Gayle Brandeis, author of The Book of Dead Birds and winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction "A nuanced and often disturbing consideration of the assets and liabilities of friendship and loyalty. Very brave mother-daughter book groups will do well to choose this novel!" -Katharine Weber, author of Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, The Music Lesson, and The Little Women "Every once in a while a book comes along that speaks the truth so intensely that it's a bit like ambulance chasing: You want to look away but simply can't. In this era of Prada-obsessed chick-lit heroines and Machiavellian Mean Girls, the young women in The Bitch Posse are complex Every Girls---precocious but confused, wry but sad, rebellious but stability-seeking, insecure yet powerful. An exquisitely observant portrait of three very different best friends whose lives change forever on a fateful night in high school, The Bitch Posse is one of the saddest, funniest, and most original stories about deep emotional connections and the forces that threaten to unravel them."---Lori Gottlieb, author of Stick Figure: A Diary of My Former Self About the AuthorMartha O'Connor lives in Marin County, California, with her husband, the novelist Philip F. O'Connor. The Bitch Posse is her first novel.
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