Small-Town Girl

by Ellen Cooney

Colleen's relationship with her best friend, her first love, her Catholic education, and her budding literary talent are all vital parts of her life growing up in a small Massachusetts town in the 1960s.

184 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Ellen Cooney is the author of eleven novels, most recently A Cowardly Woman No More (Coffee House Press, April, 2023). Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Fiction, New England Review, and many other journals. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation. Born in Clinton, Massachusetts in 1952, she lived for many years in Cambridge, and taught writing classes and workshops at Boston College, Northeastern University, MIT, Harvard Extension School, and the Seminars at Radcliffe. She lives in Phippsburg, Maine.

Reviews

[Stephanie Fitzgerald]

DNF, after a few chapters. Just did not hold my interest.

[False · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was Clooney's first novel. It would have benefitted from better editing. The historical novel I read by her was amazing. This one seems taken from the life of the author and the day to days of a small town girl in a New England village fell flat for me. I still intend to read all of her work. So I'm pushing forward.

[Cecii · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had a touch of nostalgia for me and it brought back memories of my earlier teenage years. I enojoyed it very much, it was light and easy to follow along. I related to the story and I think she did a very nice job capturing the feelings and thoughts that emerge in this stages of life.
It was a very nice book <3