Description
Book SynopsisTell me what you can't forget,and I'll tell you who you are . . .
Cat is fifteen and the lonely new girl in town. Until she meets her neighbour, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat is quickly lured into Marlena's roller-coaster orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blonde hair. Within one intense, obsessive year of friendship, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby.
Decades later, when a ghost from that pivotal year surfaces unexpectedly, Cat must try again to move on, even as the memory of Marlena calls her back.
Marlena is a riveting, intelligent and brilliant novel from debut author Julie Buntin.
'If you loved The Girls, this is for you . . . totally addictive' Grazia
Trade ReviewThe gifted young writer Julie Buntin has written a novel of deep and exquisite intelligence, humour and riveting sensitivity. A terrific debut -- Lorrie Moore
Julie Buntin captures that unique moment at the precipice of adulthood with emotional honesty and insight. She writes the kind of piercing, revelatory sentences you have to read to whomever is near, sentences you find yourself remembering years later -- Jonathan Safran Foer
[A] vivid debut. . . .Buntin's prose is emotional and immediate, and the interior lives she draws of young women and obsessive best friends are Ferrante-esque * Booklist *
Sensitive and smart and arrestingly beautiful, makes coming-of-age stories feel both urgent and new. It could so easily be clichéd or sentimental. It is neither. Buntin creates a world so subtle and nuanced and alive that it imprints like a memory. Devastating; as unforgettable as it is gorgeous. * Kirkus *
One of this year's buzziest debuts * Vogue *
Smart, sassy, sexy * Red *
Marlena felt urgent and alive. It's shocking and disturbing, but its depiction of an intense, obsessive friendship felt nuanced and heartbreakingly real. * Stylist *
In
Marlena, Julie Buntin revitalizes a classic story making it all her own with sensuous, vibrant prose and a narrator who feels deeply even as she feints certain painful truths about herself. In these pages I not only saw my own story, I came to understand it better. Many readers will too. This is a fierce and gorgeous debut -- Edan Lepucki, bestselling author of
CaliforniaMarlena slayed me. Gorgeously written, with a sense of place so perfect I didn't even have to close my eyes to pretend I was there, this novel is rich and sensuous and beautifully conceived. Buntin writes about the all-consuming bond between teenage girls with urgency and suspense and despair. I loved every word -- Anton DiSclafani, bestselling author of
The After Party and The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for GirlsMesmerizing . . . an indelible portrait of friendship, the power of influence and the kind of regret that can last a lifetime * Harpers Bazaar *
Buntin’s prose crackles like static electricity . . . she explores addiction and loss with poetic tenderness * New York Observer *
Beautifully descriptive . . . This generous, sensitive novel of true feeling is at its most moving when it sweeps you up . . . a painful exorcism and a devoted memorial to friends and selves who are gone * New York Times Book Review *
