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Keith Mosman: Five Book Friday: Fearless New Collections from Asian American Poets (0 comment)
As Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month draws to a close, I wanted to highlight some of the recent books of poetry that have so impressed me. Here are five poets who have written collections that are each rich, wise, and fearless...
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The Burning Girl

by Claire Messud
The Burning Girl

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  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9780393635027
ISBN10: 0393635023
Condition: Standard
DustJacket: Standard

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From Powells.com

Powell's Picks of the Month

Hot new releases and under-the-radar gems for adults and kids.


Authors Attract

They live, they write, they love; we read. Powell’s pays homage to the time-honored tradition of authors marrying their own with our list of today’s top literary power couples.


Staff Pick

Messud has crafted a pitch-perfect portrait of a childhood friendship that changes with the profound stresses of adolescence. Reading it was an immersive experience; it is tender and heartbreaking. The Burning Girl dives to the primal core of girls and will stay with me for a very long time. Recommended By Kathi K., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

A bracing, hypnotic coming-of-age story about the bond of best friends, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Emperor’s Children.

Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship. The Burning Girl is a complex examination of the stories we tell ourselves about youth and friendship, and straddles, expertly, childhood’s imaginary worlds and painful adult reality — crafting a true, immediate portrait of female adolescence.

Claire Messud, one of our finest novelists, is as accomplished at weaving a compelling fictional world as she is at asking the big questions: To what extent can we know ourselves and others? What are the stories we create to comprehend our lives and relationships? Brilliantly mixing fable and coming-of-age tale, The Burning Girl gets to the heart of these matters in an absolutely irresistible way.

Review

"Messud shines a tender gaze on her protagonists and sustains an elegiac tone as she conveys the volatile emotions of adolescent behavior and the dawning of female vulnerability.... Informed by the same sophisticated intelligence and elegant prose [as The Woman Upstairs], but gaining new poignant depths, this novel is haunting and emotionally gripping." Publishers Weekly

Review

"Messud’s entrancing, gorgeously incisive coming-of-age drama astutely tracks the sharpening perceptions of an exceptionally eloquent young woman navigating heartbreak and regret and realizing that one can never fathom ‘the wild, unknowable interior lives’ of others, not even someone you love." Booklist (Starred Review)

Review

"Slim but impactful .... The Burning Girl asks how well we can ever know our closest confidants and answers its own question with every refined page." Vanity Fair

Review

"[An] intense coming-of-age novel.... Messud captures the complicated nature of contemporary adolescence through a nuanced portrait of childhood love and loyalty deteriorating under the pressure of approaching adulthood." Jane Ciabattari, BBC

Review

"Claire Messud is one of our foremost chroniclers of women's hidden appetites." Ruth Franklin, New York Times Magazine

Synopsis

Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship.

Claire Messud, one of our finest novelists, is as accomplished at weaving a compelling fictional world as she is at asking the big questions: To what extent can we know ourselves and others? What are the stories we create to comprehend our lives and relationships? Brilliantly mixing fable and coming-of-age tale, The Burning Girl gets to the heart of these matters in an absolutely irresistible way.

"Messud's prose grabs the reader by the collar."--New York Times Book Review

"Adept at evoking complex psychological territory."--The New Yorker

"Messud writes about happiness, and about infatuation--about love--more convincingly than any author I've encountered in years."--NPR


About the Author

Claire Messud is a recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Author of five previous works of fiction including her most recent novel, The Woman Upstairs, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.

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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 4 (2 comments)

`
David Jordan , January 01, 2018 (view all comments by David Jordan)
An unusually compelling and well-written coming-of-age story for two contemporary teenage girls in New England. It takes a good bit of talent for an author to create a riveting story from a believable real-life type situation. Messud has the ability to lead the reader to expect the absolute worst, then surprises with something different and unanticipated.

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`
Tisa , October 27, 2017 (view all comments by Tisa)
The Burning Girl looks at female friendship, family strife, adolescent coming-of-age, and secret-keeping from the POV of a teenage girl whose life is impacted by how these elements of her best friend's life affect her own. This quietly powerful story moves slowly but with a steady build-up to the tragic ending. I don't think that's a spoiler statement because the reader knows from the beginning that tragedy is inevitable. Julia is a very mature-minded young woman, and she tells the story of her friendship with Cassie from a distance of only two years. And that is my only criticism of the writing. Julia's analysis of their relationship and her detailed memories seem to be those of a person who is looking back after many years later and after many years of pondering and examining every word, thought, and action. I would recommend this book to teenagers--girls and boys--as well as adult readers for its insight into the deep relationships that adolescent girls can form.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780393635027
Binding:
Hardcover
Publication date:
08/29/2017
Publisher:
W.W. Norton & Company
Pages:
256
Author:
Claire Messud

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