Blueprints for Building Better Girls Stories

In these eight darkly funny linked stories, Schappell delves into the lives of an eclectic cast of archetypal female characters—from the high school slut to the good girl, the struggling artist to the college party girl, the wife who yearns for a child to the reluctant mother— to explore the commonly shared but rarely spoken of experiences that build girls into women and women into wives and mothers. In “Monsters of the Deep,” teenage Heather struggles to balance intimacy with a bad reputation; years later in “I’m Only Going to Tell You This Once,” she must reconcile her memories of the past with her role as the mother of an adolescent son. In “The Joy of Cooking,” a phone conversation between Emily, a recovering anorexic, and her mother explores a complex bond; in “Elephant” we see Emily’s sister, Paige, finally able to voice her ambivalent feelings about motherhood to her new best friend, Charlotte. And in “Are You Comfortable?” we meet a twenty-one-year-old Charlotte cracking under the burden of a dark secret, the effects of which push Bender, a troubled college girl, to the edge in “Out of the Blue into the Black.” Weaving in and out of one another’s lives, whether connected by blood, or friendship, or necessity, these women create deep and lasting impressions. In revealing all their vulnerabilities and twisting our preconceived notions of who they are, Elissa Schappell, with dazzling wit and poignant prose, has forever altered how we think about the nature of female identity and how it evolves.

“Intense, beautiful, and true, the stories in Beasts and Children speak to that catastrophe known as childhood: the loneliness and fleeting camaraderies;  the perilous gaps of adult attention and soul-saving intimacy with the natural world. In her remarkable debut, Amy Parker proves herself an unflinching, passionate, and profoundly humane writer, even as she holds a knife to your heart.” –-Michelle Huneven, author of Blame and others

“Amy Parker's stories are thrillingly self-possessed. They stand perfectly poised, like balancing artists, between the lyrical and the no-nonsense, the impassioned and the restrained. She has a gift for uncloaking the mysteries of her characters, particularly the children, who themselves struggle to uncloak the mysteries of the great big world of other minds into which they've been born: friends and grown-ups, strangers and parents, humans and animals alike. I was moved and fascinated by this book. I'll be first in line to read her next.” – Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead and others

In Blueprints for Building Better Girls, Schappell’s first work of fiction since her celebrated debut Use Me —a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year, and a New York Times Notable book—she delves into the lives of an eclectic cast of archetypal female characters, including the high school slut, the party girl, the reluctant mother, and the anorexic daughter, twisting our pre-conceived notions of who these women are, as they make unexpected and wonderful visits to each other’s stories.

From the tense territory of a sagging, grand porch in Texas to a gated community in steamy Thailand to a lonely apartment in nondescript suburbia, these linked stories unwind the lives of three families as they navigate ever-shifting landscapes. Wry and sharp, dark and subversive, they keep watch as these characters make the choices that will change the course of their lives and run into each other in surprising, unforgettable ways.  The Bowmans are declining Texas gentry, heirs to an airline fortune, surrounded by a patriarch's stuffed trophies and lost dreams. They will each be haunted by the past as they strive to escape its force. The Fosters are diplomats’ kids who might as well be orphans. Jill and Maizie grow up privileged amid poverty, powerless to change the lives of those around them and uncertain whether they have the power to change their own. The Guzmans have moved between Colombia and the United States for two generations, each seeking opportunity for the next, only to find that the American dream can be as crushing as it is elusive.  Amy Parker's debut collection considers--with an unfailingly observant eye--our failures and our successes, our fractures and our connections, our impact and our evanescence. She marks herself a worthy heir to the long tradition of smart women casting cool and careful glances at the American middle class.