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Summary
Summary
A New York Times Bestselling AuthorJulia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. But as they 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 -- a true, immediate portrait of female adolescence.
Author Notes
Claire Messud was born in Greenwich, Connecticut. She grew up in the United States, Australia, and Canada. She returned to the states when she was a teenager. She did undergraduate and graduate studies at Yale University and Cambridge University.
Messud's debut novel, "When The World Was Steady" (1995), was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. "The Emperor's Children" was a New York Times Bestseller and was longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Her most recent novel, "The Burning Girl" was published in 2017 by W. W. Norton.
She has taught creative writing at Amherst College, Kenyon College, University of Maryland, Yale University, in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers in North Carolina, in the Graduate Writing program at The Johns Hopkins University, and at Harvard University. Messud also taught at the Sewanee: The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. She is on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College.
The American Academy of Arts and Letters has recognized Messud's talent with both an Addison Metcalf Award and a Strauss Living Award. She is s a recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
New York Review of Books Review
SAPIENS: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. (Harper Perennial, $22.99.) Harari, an Israeli historian, delves into humanity's history, exploring why Homo sapiens - once just one human species among several - dominated. This sweeping account attempts to tell a genetic, cultural and social history, with a particular focus on the roles of cognition and agricultural and scientific advancements in our evolution. MEN WITHOUT WOMEN: Stories, by Haruki Murakami. Translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen. (Vintage, $16.) In these seven tales, emotionally adrift men long for the women they love; one story compares the experience to "a pastelcolored Persian carpet." Our reviewer, Jay Fielden, praised the "rainy Tokyo of unfaithful women, neat single malt, stray cats, cool cars and classic jazz played on hi-fi setups." WRESTLING WITH HIS ANGEL: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, Volume II, 1849-1856, by Sidney Blumenthal. (Simon & Schuster, $18.) By 1849, Lincoln's only term as a representative comes to an undistinguished end. The second installment of this biography follows Lincoln as he clashed with his rival, Stephen A. Douglas, who advanced policies that helped expand slavery; eked out a political future; and aligned with the Republicans. THE BURNING GIRL, by Claire Messud. (Norton, $15.95.) Julia and Cassie, two teenagers in Massachusetts, have been best friends since nursery school, but as they edge into adolescence the friendship begins to unravel. Messud is skilled at capturing the perils and rites of passage that come with being a teenage girl, along with the intimacies and heartbreak of female friendships. Ultimately, the book is "a story about stories - their power, necessity and inevitable artifice," our reviewer, Laura Lippman, wrote. WHY WE SLEEP: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, by Matthew Walker. (Scribner, $17.) Walker, who directs Berkeley's Center for Human Sleep Science, sees our societal sleep deficit as "the greatest public health challenge we face in the 21st century." The virtues of sleep, he says - everything from better memory retention to the ability to overcome negative feelings - can dramatically improve your life. MY ABSOLUTE DARLING, by Gabriel Tallent. (Riverhead, $16.) Fourteen-year-old Turtle is growing up feral in Northern California, raised by her father to be a self-reliant survivalist. Her world is limited to school, where she's an outcast, and home, where her father trains her and preys upon her. A romance offers an escape, and she must use the skills she learned from her father against him in a fight for her freedom.
Library Journal Review
Julia and Cassie are best friends from childhood, but starting in seventh grade they begin to drift apart. With her college-bound peers, Julia, the book's narrator, moives toward academics and the speech team, while Cassie gets involved with the party scene. Conflict with her mother and her mother's live-in boyfriend lead Cassie to increasingly reckless behavior. As Julia helplessly observes Cassie's downward spiral, her attempts to reach out are rebuffed, and she turns to Cassie's ex-boyfriend, Peter (whom Julia has always had a crush on) for solace. While the story line of friends taking different paths during adolescence is well-trod territory, Messud (The Emperor's Children) displays uncommon skill in depicting the conflicting interests and emotions of the tween years. The opening section is especially vivid in describing the summer before seventh grade, when the girls, with one foot still in childhood, struggle to fill their idle hours with exploration and imagination. In giving the sole narration to Julia, Messud somewhat paints herself into a corner, as the accounts of Cassie's experiences told to Julia through Peter include a level of observational detail that defies plausibility. VERDICT Despite some drawbacks, the narrative has broad appeal for teens and adults alike. [See Prepub Alert, 2/27/17.]-Christine -DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.