Silver Girl

by Leslie Pietrzyk

It's the early 1980s. Ronald Reagan's economy will trickle down any day now, and Chicago's Tylenol Killer has struck: an unknown person is stuffing cyanide into capsules, then returning them to drugstore shelves.

Against the backdrop of this rampant anxiety, one young woman, desperate to escape the unspoken secrets of her Midwestern family, bluffs her way into the fancy "school by the lake" in Chicago. There she meets Jess, charismatic and rich and needy, and the two form an insular, competitive friendship. Jess' family appears perfect to the narrator's wishful eye, and she longs to fit into their world, even viewing herself as a potentially better daughter than the unappreciative Jess. But the uneven power dynamic chafes the narrator, along with lingering guilt about the sister she left behind. Her behavior becomes increasingly risky - and after Jess' sister dies in murky circumstances and the Tylenol killer exposes the intricate double life of Jess' father, she finds herself scrambling for footing. Nothing is as it seems, and the randomness of life feels cruel, whether one's fate is swallowing a poisoned Tylenol or being born into a damaged and damaging family.

SILVER GIRL is a cousin to Emma Cline's The Girls and Emily Gould's Friendship in its nuanced exploration of female friendship, with the longing of Stephanie Danler's Sweetbitter.

"The latest from Pietrzyk (Pears on a Willow Tree) is a profound, mesmerizing, and disturbing novel that delves into the vagaries of college relationships and how the social-financial stratum one is born into reverberates through one’s life." Starred Review from Publishers Weekly.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Contemporary, Historical, Novels, Literary Fiction, Book Club

272 pages, Paperback

First published February 27, 2018

About the author

I am the author of Silver Girl, Pears on a Willow Tree and A Year and a Day (novels) and, most recently, Admit This to No One (short stories about official DC). My collection of linked stories about the death of my first husband, This Angel on My Chest, won the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Short fiction & essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Washington Post Magazine, Salon, Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Hudson Review, The Sun, Shenandoah, Arts & Letters, Washingtonian, The Collagist, and Cincinnati Review. Oh, and one of my stories was awarded a 2020 Pushcart Prize--!!! I'm a member of the core fiction faculty at the Converse low-residency MFA program.

If I'm not writing, what I love most to do is cook...which is probably apparent from my books and stories, which are filled with food. Fun facts: Once I won the blue ribbon for chocolate chip cookies at the Virginia State Fair. Check out my website for a recipe for the best Thanksgiving stuffing in the world!

A guide for book clubs is posted on my website. Also...recipes!

Reviews

[Leslie Pietrzyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

It doesn't seem very midwestern to give one's own book 5 stars...but, jeez, I worked so hard to write the book I most wanted to read. Thank you for giving it a chance.

[joyce g · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Leslie Pietrzyk brings a voice to a series of deeply moving characters.

[Acacia Irving · Rating 3 out of 5]

Emma Cline the girls meets the bell jar

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

A 3-star novel with 4-star writing, a 1-star plot, and a 5-star portrait of a complicated friendship between two college girls who have everything and nothing in common.

[Caroline Bock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bold novel.

This novel is about a girl (never named) from a working class family in Iowa City and her years at a big Chicago university filled with the connected and the well-to-do, and how she navigates this uneasy journey in the early 1980s with the Tylenol scare in the background, with drinking and sex, and most interesting to me, class divides been the very wealthy and the just getting by.

I loved this unnamed narrator at the center of SILVER GIRL. I loved how the story moves from Chicago to Iowa City, to her immediate turbulent passed of out-of-work guitar-playing uncles/predators to brutal fathers and Virginia Slims-smoking mother and her angelic sister, Grace (maybe my only criticism—Grace is too good and named Grace)—and then moves back to campus—to her simmering friendship with her wealthy roommate Jess, to her knowing obsession with Jess’s fiancé. Some chapters are very short, flash fiction almost, and others feel like short stories unto themselves.

This is a novel that writer should read closely for the language deftly turns from beautiful to beautifully brutal. I read it as a reader first and then as a writer, making up sections (I may have to buy another copy!).

This is also a novel about female friendships, and even more so, about love between sisters. There's much to discuss/debate in this novel, and I would wholly recommend this novel to book clubs because it seems like we’ve all been there—unsure and sure of ourselves at the same time, ‘silver girls.’ While the first person narrator is never named, I feel I know her. I have been her. Read.

--Caroline

[Mary Lins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cannot remember how, "Silver Girl", by Leslie Pietrzyk, got on my radar, but I'm glad it did! Set in the early 1980s it took me right back to my own time as a young woman, "...before answering machines, before voice mail, email, texts, and Skype. Letters and phone calls were all we had. This was a time when not answering a ringing phone was an act of subversion." Ah yes!

"Silver Girl" is about female friendships, sisters, betrayals, loyalties, secrets, and lies. This beautifully written and perfectly paced novel has an unnamed (and increasingly unlikable) first-person narrator. How reliable is her memory, her sense of self, and her ability to analyze the people and environment around her? That's the intriguing and often gripping, question for Pietrzyk's lucky readers.

For this novel, Pietrzyk skillfully employs a structure that is not chronologically straight-forward, but rather alternates among semesters of our unnamed narrator's university years in Evanston, Illinois. On her first day there, she meets Jess, a gregarious young woman from a wealthy Chicago family. That she never names herself is a part of the unfolding of the narrator's story. What happened in her family in Iowa that hardened her so thoroughly? Why does she make the choices regarding men and sex that she does? As we glean her story, the novel deepens in tone and meaning. Now we are in the arena guilt, and responsibility toward others; when we run from a horror rather than stopping it, are we complicit?

[Joe M · Rating 4 out of 5]

So the 1980's are now considered "Historical Fiction?" Jesus. With that cold reminder of my age settling in, Silver Girl is actually a fantastically dark coming-of-age tale makes the most of it's "period" setting without falling to the typical 80's traps and cliches. Yes, theres plenty of Tab, some spot-on music references, and pervading sense of Reaganomics, but it's more of a subtle backdrop to Leslie Pietrzyk's finely-drawn characters, following a college friendship that blooms and unravels over 3-years of university life.

It's 1982 when the novel opens and the Chicago Tylenol poisonings have claimed victims and unnerved the nation when Jess and the unnamed narrator meet as roommates. Jess is from an affluent family in Chicago, blessed with looks, charm, and privilege, while the narrator is a transplant, just getting by, from a small town in Iowa. As the novel jumps between the high's and low's of various years at college, we slowly learn secrets, jealousies, family history, and hidden desires. Leslie Pietrzyk's does an wonderful job creating a slow, suspenseful burn as a troubling picture emerges and cracks in their friendship form, making Silver Girl a dark and unsettling character study.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

When a young girl leaves her rural Iowa home for a bustling college campus in Evanston, Illinois, she meets a far wealthier and more popular roommate who she is quick to share everything with - that is, except the truth of her deeply troubling past.

Beneath its leisurely paced, yet complex writing, lurks a devastating story that will tear readers’ hearts in two.

(The author also expertly captures the seasons of Chicago.)

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

The glimpses of insight into the main character didn't feel like enough; her friendship with Jess felt sad and self-destructive (which maybe is the point?); there was no resolution, no absolution. Still, the depictions of relationships between women, Midwestern winters, angsty college days, and broken families were very well-written.

[Kyle Carson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was given an ARC of Silver Girl through a partnership with Rockstar Book Tours in exchange for an honest review.

Silver Girl transports us back to the 1980s in a flurry of Tab and typewriters, where a nameless narrator has escaped her past by moving away to college. There she meets, Jess--beautiful, brave Jess from a wealthy Chicago family who flies through life with reckless abandon. As their college years progress, the narrator and Jess become closer at the same time that the chasm of secrets widens between them. The narrator is desperate to keep her past a secret-- from Jess as well as the reader. Meanwhile, she spirals into self-sabotaging behaviour that throws all of her relationships onto the rocks. The narrator struggles to reconcile the person she wants to be--wanted, loved, and finally a person of value-- with what the circumstances of her past push her to be-- the “monster.” As the narrator falls from grace throughout the book, she continually minimizes her behaviour to the reader and lies to all those around her until it becomes difficult to trust her. Is the narrator telling the truth, or lying to the reader like she lies to her friends and family? Who is the narrator, really, and what about her past has left her so damaged?

An incredible character study, Silver Girl is all about relationships: between best friends, between sisters, between parents and children. The book has no discernable plotline, in the same way that real life doesn’t either, but is written with a comfortable pace and mysterious tension that keeps the reader turning pages. Right from the first page, the mystery of the narrator grabs and doesn’t let go-- who is this girl? And what is she running from? The book begins on the day the narrator moves into the freshman dorm, where she meets Jess for the first time. The end of the chapter gives us some interesting foreshadowing when Jess decides the narrator isn’t afraid of much, and while the narrator doesn’t agree with her, she also doesn’t object. “She could believe what she wanted, and I didn’t have to lie.” As their relationship develops, we see how the narrator bends the truth: not always by outright lying (though she lies a lot by the end) but by letting people make their own assumptions without challenging them. The narrator is especially fascinating because as her downfall progresses and we see her turn to destructive behaviours, her actions are at first understandable, but she continues to escalate until the character you once sympathized with becomes unlikeable. All of this was done without resorting to dramatic lengths—the narrator doesn’t haven’t to scream or use violence or key anyone’s car to be destructive—which is a pleasant subtly.

As well, every character was so beautifully flawed! Even little Penny was both the darling, innocent victim as well as a troubled, disruptive brat, which was so awesome to see! Pietrzyk doesn’t shy away from the dark side when creating complex, dynamic characters. When she shows the characters’ dark sides, it’s not in an attempt to sway the reader’s opinion. The characters simply are-- their good and bad parts--and this allows the characters to have more nuance.

The writing itself is both lyrical and to the point, both wildly expressive and yet down to earth. The writing style focuses heavily on mundane details, and the observations that come out of those details were both beautiful and tragic. I really loved the level of detail, as I felt it helped reveal things about the narrator as well as set a vivid scene. However, there were times where I felt the book veered too much into detail, which slowed down some scenes. The book was written in a non-linear fashion which worked so well. Because the story is not about a plotline and more about revealing the characters’ true “character,” the non-linear progression was effective in tricking the reader into making their own assumptions about the narrator. This non-linear style allowed the author to revisit scenes later in the book and reveal more information, which could totally change the reader’s perspective of the situation. The non-linear style is another way in which the narrator manipulates how the reader sees her, which made for an interesting read.

Despite this grand fall, Silver Girl gives us a lot to connect to. The narrator finds a way to redeem herself at the end, and figures out how to reconcile her past with the person she wants to be. All throughout, we see the depth of the narrator and Jess’ friendship, as well as the bonds of sisterhood as Jess loses one sister and gains another, while the narrator struggles with what to do for her own sister. All of it speaks to a human experience that’s both messy and profound, that means nothing and everything all at once.

All in all, 4/5 stars. An incredible character study of a college girl who can’t stop running from her past, even when it starts to hurt the people she loves.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can no longer hear Bridge Over Troubled Water without thinking of the unnamed narrator of Silver Girl and of the author, whose time has come to shine with the release of this heralded novel. Silver Girl is both a reader's book, in that it's a gripping story, and a writer's book, in that it has much to teach about structure and tone and unreliable narrators. Yes, you can write a book with a female main character who's not entirely sympathetic and the reader will follow her anyway as long as you treat her with empathy. And this book offers a new twist on a coming-of-age novel set in the Midwest in the latter half of the 20th century. What's not to like?

[Dana Cann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I’ve read this year. A complicated, compelling protagonist, who’s portrayed sympathetically and realistically without a false note. Just excellent.

[Rujing Wang · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I loved about Silver Girl is the nuanced portrayal of the heroine/narrator/protagonist as morally-complex due to a(n ongoing) history of traumatic abuse. She’s in college in Chicago, having fled an abusive, narcissistic father, a numbed and complicit mother, and an uncle who clearly has no concept of sexual boundaries (this chapter was weird, as it seemed that the narrator actually invited him to have sex with her. Is this “unreliable narrator” born of a need to rationalize or something else? Some sort of guilt-fueled attempt at solidarity with her 10-years junior sister, who is being sexually abused by their father?).

We learn that in order to make it to college, she shamelessly took advantage of her small town Iowa best friend, “borrowing” her summer savings to have an abortion, since apparently her uncle got her pregnant. We learn this fairly late in the book, but very early on, we learn that she’s a back-stabbing slut who is blowing her only and best college friend’s boyfriend. In a library bathroom. All the time.

I use these harsh judgmental words, not because that’s my opinion of our silver girl, but to highlight the deeply frozen self-hatred that she is in the process of healing, during the events of this novel. By the way, I’m gonna call her silver girl (lowercase), since she intentionally is never given a name. (I could have sworn that I read that her name is Faith, as her sister’s name is Grace, but I must have imagined it... ) “Silver Girl” is a story that she regales her younger sister with of a girl who is entirely silver chromatically. These story-telling sessions are the only life-preservers she has the resources to toss to her sister, prior to the ending of the book. Silver Girl is a personification of a silver crayon - not only is her hair, skin, eyes, etc. silver, all traces that she leaves (think, bodily fluids and effluences) are also silver. So she leaves only silver marks, like the pure demarcations of a crayon.

There is this pleasure in art supplies, in the choice that is involved with selecting colors and hues. I think there may be an implication that for a young girl trapped in a nightmarish family, the power of self-expression and the ability to make any choices at all, takes on an even greater significance, a life-saving quality. Grace, like her older sister silver girl, who can only (until the end of the book) offer only limited protection from abuse, is said to never (be seen) crying. The ability to fully feel emotions has been shut off for safety (and safe-keeping) in both sisters. And so, this shared act of story-creating, with silver girl telling stories verbally, and Grace illustrating them patiently and doggedly, is an act of self-reclaiming, a tiny spark of hope, that passes under the radar of the - rather monstrous - parents/adults.

But Silver Girl’s unmitigated silveriness also speaks to both sisters’ limited emotional range. That in order to survive (perhaps too obviously, the book is dotted with a list of “survival strategies”), both sisters have separately figured out how to display a mask of sameness, of being immune to external forces. They always rub off silver if you get close to them, bleed silver if you cut them. There is the implied heartbreak of gold (the “best color”) being out of reach, or perhaps too sincere or too real. Silver, reminiscent as it is of the dark femininity of the moon, of coolness, of shadows, is pleasantly pretty without being threatening.

So let’s examine the primary relationship, the one that gets the most “screen time”, in the book - that between silver girl and Jess, her “golden” foil. Jess is the golden girl in the sun, blessed with easy good looks, money, and privilege she takes for granted. Her gold (yellow, blonde) hair is established immediately. Her family is rich - that is, she literally has gold. We quickly understand the dynamic between silver girl and Jess.

Jess allows silver girl to be her flattering shadow, the way the moon is bright because of borrowed light from the sun. From the outside, they appear to be inseparable best friends, on equal footing, but in actuality, it is more of a codependent relationship where each friend supplies the emotional feed the other needs. Slotted into complementary roles to hide each other’s vulnerabilities.

Jess suffers from rankling jealousy of her own sunnier younger sister (who has her own sorrowful tale of woe that, to be honest, I haven’t totally unpacked yet). Silver girl is a constant salve on Jess’s ego, a companion who always carefully says exactly the right thing. Silver girl knows how to acquiesce, how to flatter, how to always make her friend look good or better. In return, she gets to bask in the glow of Jess’s sunshine - the point being that this projection of “normalcy” that Jess herself possesses and is thus able to cast onto silver girl is deeply seductive. The unaddressed trauma within silver girl, and her ongoing sorrow and guilt of having “abandoned” her younger sister to their toxic family by going off to college, festers as a deep belief in the reality of her own self-hatred. (That is, her anger at her family and their abuse is experienced as self-loathing and worthlessness.)

With all of that said, what makes this novel so touching is that none of this ultimately negates their friendship. Although the friendship does break up when the truth of silver girl’s betrayal (boyfriend, blowjobs) comes out - when silver girl herself finally admits the full extent of her actions to Jess, the friendship itself is portrayed as having been real. Of having been meaningful for its own sake. Silver girl sees that although she had never shown Jess her true self, Jess had nevertheless truly loved her and offered the best of herself. I think at this point, late in the novel, something in her breaks open... shortly after this, we hear about her rescuing her younger sister from her father and mother’s evil clutches. (I say “evil” because very little is offered in the way of redemption for either of their parents...so again, not a personal judgment of those characters, but reflecting the attitudes of the narrator).

So this backstabbing with the bathroom blowjobs - I thought this was brilliant. Since we learn this about silver girl’s character very early in the book, the rest of the book is a journey towards understanding why she’s such a backstabbing bitch.

And she is. She sees herself this way, and objectively speaking - yes, she is.

Okay, I think it’s like this. First of all, her history of sexual abuse and trauma. Trauma victims tend to recreate their abuse in an attempt to access emotionally or cellularly locked-up memories. We get saddening glimpses thruout the novel of how silver girl seems to be constantly finding herself sexually used by random men, as though she were some kind of dark vortex of secret shame...I think she says something like this about herself.

Second of all, she is chasing qualities in others, especially powerful or privileged men from Jess’s world to embody in herself. This is not at all done lightly - rather, it is done from a perspective of “I need this to save my life, and the life of my little sister”). In allowing these admittedly sordid interactions with “Tommy” (quotes here because he’s presented by our narrator as such a tool, rather than a person), in allowing herself to bask in his (objectively reprehensible) desire, silver girl is seeking to absorb the essence of male power, of men who take what they want without caring for the women they use. I don’t think it’s hard to see the magnetism there that draws silver girl in.

Third of all, she is punishing herself and setting herself up to destroy her friendship with Jess. The naked need and greed that we see silver girl display, for example in that scene in the car with Jess’s father offering her money in a rather patriarchial way, is the real underpinning of their relationship. Their relationship, status quo, is unsustainable. In fact, it would be self-harming for silver girl to sustain such a relationship, as the entire relationship is simply a mask she wears to keep others from seeing the heart of her grief and pain. Of course, we know that you’ve got to confront your demons if you wanna be okay, so... the break-up of this core friendship is crucial for her personal growth and transformation.

I really liked how this novel handled portraying attitudes towards money. If I had to sum up silver girl’s feelings toward money, it would be “money doesn’t buy happiness, but it buys something better: safety”. She’s constantly stealing thru the entire novel - lipstick, food, change from purses - and the big finale at the end revolves around the fact that she stole her best friend’s diamond engagement ring. With this clandestinely-gotten nest egg, she is able to bring her father to court and win guardianship of her sister.

It’s a triumphant moment, but I like it that the author never makes you feel like she’s excusing any of silver girl’s behavior. She’s the eternal mooch. She hates ever voicing her financial need, but she knows how to play the game to get free stuff from Jess and her family. She constantly makes excuses for herself - for example, that since Jess had told her boyfriend where to find silver girl for homework advice, that was some sort of tacit “go ahead” to have sex with her boyfriend. Hmm, sure. She’s both incredibly perceptive and incredibly dense, the way that smart people sensitized by trauma tend to be.

I would say this book is about surviving sexual abuse, sisterhood, and why “bad” people do “bad” things. Why? Because trauma is passed down thru lineages (family lines) - silver girl acknowledges this when she briefly mentions her father’s father abusing him. Nevertheless, her father is still portrayed as a monster. However, we see silver girl breaking this cycle of passed down abuse, and we are made to empathize with her morally-poor choices. There are two ethical interpretations that come to mind: one is that the book is saying that morality is based on the privilege of “normalcy”, and that if you lack that privilege, you are entitled to making your own moral calls. I don’t think the author is really trying to say this though. The other interpretation that comes to mind for me is that yes, people who are at their wits’ ends may make selfish choices that hurt others, but there is a larger story to be aware of, and things aren’t always as black and white as they seem. Silver girl dissects the foibles and blind-spots of Jess and her family with a laser eye, while only able to reference her own shiveringly, aware of a black hole but afraid to look too closely so as not to fall in...

I would say that at the end of the book, she’s at the very beginning of her healing journey, just past the first major breakthrough, so to speak. It’s beautiful, of course, and incredibly heartwarming that she was able to extract her - 12 year old? - sister from that toxic soup and provide a (much more) loving home for her. I gave this book 4 stars because I really really liked it, without deeply loving it. I found the chronological jumping around annoying. It’s one of those books where it makes a lot more sense the second time you read it, if you can make yourself read it a second time.













SPOILERS

[Michelle Brafman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd give this novel 10 stars if I could. In her typical stunning prose, and with tremendous heart, verity, and fearlessness, Leslie Pietrzyk tells the story of a turbulent relationship between two Northwestern University students. This is one of the best books I've read about female friendship. And what a page turner! I highly recommend this novel for book groups. No doubt, bibliophiles will hotly debate the narrator's choices and morality and then for days later, reflect on the most intense friendships of their lives.

[Sonia Reppe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the setting, the time period ('80s), and especially the writing, which brimmed with the hope and desperation of a damaged youth trying to climb into a better life (from her 1st person pov). The story centers on a poor girl/rich girl friendship at the unnamed college in Evanston (with the purple school color), and the financial chasm between them that affects their relationship.
I remember the Tylenol scare. Pietrzyk takes a liberty and creates a fictional victim -- a single mom who leaves behind a daughter who then comes into the college girls' lives.
I will read more by this author.

[Diane Tarantini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silver Girl by Leslie Pietrzyk is a dark and beautifully written tale about two college girls in the 80s—one wealthy, one not. The narrator of the story is the less fortunate girl.

Though I pitied her, Silver Girl’s narrator wasn’t easy to love, or even like. Because I didn’t always trust her. Actually, I never trusted her. But I admired her, specifically her single-minded resolve to escape small town America, a deeply flawed family, and the fate of being ordinary, or worse, poor for life—often going to bed hungry, sourcing her clothes at thrift shops, and always checking the change returns of pop machines and pay phones.

The time-to-time mentions of the unsolved Tylenol Murders and the careful exclusion of the narrator’s name (and what she looks like—is she pretty or not? I want to know!) add layers of mystery to the book. There’s always the tension of, will the murderer get caught? Will the narrator get caught? Is the narrator the Tylenol murderer?

Perhaps the most stunning attribute of the writing in Silver Girl is Pietrzyk’s attention to detail. The hand-stitching on Calvin Klein jeans, a tacky college apartment, the blobs of grease on a Kentucky Fried Chicken employee smock, a character’s obsession for the Cubs, the biting winter wind on Lakeshore Drive in Chicago, blue eyes recalling waters seen in National Geographic magazine.

Also deliciously spot-on is the narrator’s piercingly honest interior monologue. My eyes bugged as she judged, was envious of, and betrayed the people around her. With calculation and manipulation (sex, too) her favorite weapons to wield, she’s a bitch, but golly, with her background, who can blame her?

But along came the ending of Silver Girl. Finally at the close of the story I found myself warming up to Narrator. Because she engineered the rescue of the one person she actually loves with resources I had no idea she possessed. Up until then I almost believed she didn’t have that depth of feeling, that kind of selflessness, but I was wrong.

The thing about Silver Girl is, you’ll never know her really. No one will.

[Laurie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was cruising along with this novel for a little while and then got fed up with cryptic (and then not so cryptic) allusions to childhood abuse, and boring repetition. Pretty much every character was an awful person. I kind of wanted to know how it ended/what happened, but it seemed like it was going to be more of the same and I didn't want to waste my time for another 50+ pages!

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story was a little too slow going for me. It had some good parts but overall was a bit dull. A rich girl who is roommates with a poor girl at college and basically just how their relationship is really not a healthy one.

[Allie Coleman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful writing and painful insights keep the pages turning in Silver Girl. I gained a bit more understanding about my college-age self and the people I wrongly and too quickly judged. Great read for book clubs.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good, excellent characters and story. Will look for her other books

[Inga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Myślę że nie rozumiem.
Czytałam to tak długo że zdążyłam przywyknąć że tak książka to jakby część mojego życia. I teraz mi pusto bo skończyłam. Myślałam też że się skończy jakimś plot twistem, jednym zdaniem które by mnie wbiło w siedzenie. Coś takiego na ukoronowanie całej mocy tej historii. Bardzo to był dobry pomysł żeby nie nazywać głównej bohaterki. Każdy nią może być jednocześnie ona może być nikim. Niby się utożsamiam niby nie. Zdaje się że jej osobowość jest na to zbyt złożona i raczej nie pojęłam jak bardzo. Wszystkie te opowieści, ten potok myśli. Słowa bo nie zdania. Uwielbiam takie coś. Jakby autorka uznawała nas za na tyle inteligentnych by przeczytać historię prosto z życia bez przerabiania jej w ładne słowa. Szpetność ale taka ładna. Artystyczna jednocześnie brudna w złym znaczeniu. Bieda. Bardzo ważny wątek i wydaje mi się świetnie przedstawiony. Jess oh świetna/chujowa bohaterka. Ona była ale w znaczeniu że odcisnęła swój ślad na życiu moim i bohaterki. Grace tak bardzo dzielna. Zbyt młoda na całe zło jakiego doświadczyła. Zło. To też jest ważny wątek. Jak myślę o tej książce to czuję
ból który prawdopodobnie nie pozwoli mi na reread. Mocna książka. Taka niby nie ale jednak tak. Dużo jest nieopisane i bardzo dobrze bo wolę myśleć że jednak nic się nie wydarzyło ale jednak bardzo źle bo to może oznaczać że wydarzyło się dużo złych rzeczy. Wszystko zależy jak czytasz i mogę podsumować tak całą tą książkę, recenzję i świat. Zależy jak interpretujesz.

(czemu mi zawsze wychodzi taki naukowy ton jakbym wiedziała co to fakultet i umiała używać zdań wielokrotnie złożonych. ehhhh wyjebane mam chce tylko powiedzieć o książce) (która mi się podobała) (albo też nie) (nie wiem tak szczerze ale myślę sobie że główna bohaterka wybaczyła by mi to. że nie wiem. niewiedza też dobra. takie cytaty zajebiste były na koniec. ohh koniec. grace wszystkiego dobrego w życiu wam życzę) (tak)

[Raima Larter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely give 5-star reviews but here is one that I really want to give 6 stars to. This book is SO good, on so many levels. The story is set in the 80s against the backdrop of the Tylenol murders, which younger people may not remember, but it does not feel at all dated. The narrator, a young woman in college, is not exactly the main character, since the story is also about her friend, Jess and Jess's disturbed and dysfunctional family. The narrator's own family, back in Iowa, is always in the background, always driving the story, but only described to us in bits and pieces, all intriguing and almost all shocking. We find, as the story unfolds, that the narrator herself does not want to accept the truth of her past and this is why we, as readers, don't fully know it until the end of the book.

The two girls come from very different social classes, and money and class play a huge role in the story, particularly since the lack of money is such a driving force in the narrator's life. It's never exactly clear how the narrator was able to afford tuition at the prestigious university (apparently Northwestern) where she meets Jess, so I assumed she was the recipient of a large scholarship. It is clear that this award, wherever it came from, allowed her to believe she was escaping the life she was trying to leave behind--but, in the end, she really couldn't escape it.

The mystery and intrigue, both about the Tylenol murders and what was really going on in the girls' two families, pulled me through the book and made it difficult to put down. The beautiful writing, however, made me want to stretch out my reading experience so I could continue to savor it. Pietrzyk is a gifted writer and storyteller. I've read several of her short stories, all of which were excellent, so I knew she was good, but after reading this book, I'm truly blown away by her mastery. This is one writer we all should all follow.

Highly recommended. One of the best books I've read in years.

[Ellen Ochs · Rating 4 out of 5]

i accidentally ran into Leslie Pietryzk at Politics and Prose. (DC) She was sweet, pretty, intelligent and engaging speaker. I put it on my Montgomery County library list. Came available to me in a few weeks. Please don't let the syrupy title/cover art mislead you. Yes it is a "coming of age," or "going to college unprepared" genre novel, but it will (could?) rock your world.

Ms. Pietrzyk is a writer who has amazing talents. You think you have it after a few chapters, -- but you. probably, do not.

I can't imagine many (or any) writers who can make the narrator -- a sweet, highly flawed, hopeful, deviant, self absorbed, and sometimes disgusting young woman -- into a a sympathetic, extraordinarily relatable, heroine, whom you will root for, for the rest of your life. Who is the villain, in this book which cries out for a villain? For discussion. Would make a great "book club" discussion. (But no one ever invites me to their book club...)

I love this book -- i hate this book -- I love this book. It surprised me. I've had dreams about it. I want to know these young women.

I am going back and reading everything she has ever written. What a talent! Thank you Leslie Pietrzyk.

[Jason Pettus]

2020 reads, #17. DID NOT FINISH. I got about a third of the way through this before finally giving up because of its aggressively plot-free story, a character drama that's all character and no drama. If you're a fan of delicate MFA fiction, you'll likely enjoy this more than I did; but given that most of the population likes such fiction even less than me, the majority of you should probably stay away altogether.

[Laura Zam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a hard time putting down this deeply insightful, haunting, heart-filled book. The nonlinear structure was daring -- and thrilling. I loved how the book was authentically itself. The characters were portrayed with incredibly fine detail. The prose was original and gorgeous. I was awed on every page. Highly recommended.

[Pamela Huffman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really loved this book at the beginning, through the first half. The writing was so beautiful and the two friends’ story was super compelling. I loved the insight, the storyline, the tension, the way the story was meted out little by little. I wish the book had stayed focused on the friendship but instead it strayed to the families of the girls and there I felt a little lost, disinterested, embroiled in drama that I didn’t have a lot invested in.

The book was set in the 1980s which I didn’t honestly buy nor understand. The only allusions to the 80s that I caught were drinking tab (always, always drinking tab) and the Tylenol killer. Otherwise it could have taken place at any time and I’m not so sure that the book benefited from being assigned to the 80s. It is a timeless tale of interpersonal relations between women.

The book also jumped around in time. Didn’t really enjoy that as much. I think it would have been better in chronological order.

I loved the yearning that our narrator has. The way these parts were written was so captivating, utterly pulled me in. This was probably the strongest part of the book for me.

I loved the ending, maybe the last thirty pages. The beautiful writing returned, the focus on the friendship, the final yarns of the story knit up tidily. I think I would recommend this one, but with a warning that things take a bit of an unpleasant detour before wrapping up nicely at the end. I think I may try another from this author. She is very, very talented.

[Dna · Rating 1 out of 5]

80 pages in. I'm gonna be nice and just say this isn't for me. (coughbadwritingcough)

[Jan Stinchcomb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story of college friendship set in the eighties becomes a painful examination of class difference, abusive families and gender politics. If Americans are currently crying out for more narratives from the forgotten people of the Midwest, then they should look to Pietrzyk.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book won't be for everyone -- there's not really a linear plot -- but I thought it was an excellent examination of a friendship/relationship. The author really gets the time right (early 80s Tylenol murders time period) and unfolds the narrator's story as she relates to herself and others, especially her friend, Jess.

[Rita Ciresi · Rating 5 out of 5]

In stunningly descriptive prose, Leslie Pietrzyk exposes the hearts and minds of two young women whose dysfunctional families continue to haunt them after they escape to college. This character-driven novel is told in a non-linear fashion, and each section further complicates the relationship between the narrator and Jess and lays bare the complexities of female friendship. This is a finely crafted and absorbing piece of literary fiction.