Starred review from October 9, 2023
Grabowski’s magnetic debut takes place in Nashquitten, Mass., a fictional seaside town south of Boston, where the death of a high school student sends ripples through the community. Each of the two sections, titled “Pre” and “Post,” are narrated alternately by various women and teenage girls from Nashquitten before and after Lucy Anderson dies from a fall at a party. In the “Pre” chapters, Jane, a classmate of Lucy’s, is having a secret affair with their math teacher. Layla, the school’s academic adviser, spends time helping Lucy’s best friend, Sophia, tweak her college application essay. Mona, Layla’s roommate, works at a fish market with Marina, a teenager who witnesses Lucy’s death. The tragedy raises questions for these and other characters: Did Lucy slip? Was she pushed? Did she have a seizure, given her history with epilepsy? The “Post” chapters offer potential answers while also mapping out the way Lucy’s death reshapes the lives of those around her. Sophia shakes off her timidness as a new friendship blossoms with Jane, who remains hung up on their math teacher, and Lucy’s mother tries to find closure. The ennui of small-town life is perfectly captured in the slice-of-life vignettes, which coalesce into a riveting set of Rashomon-style retellings. Grabowski shows immense promise. Agent: Duvall Osteen, Aragi.
Starred review from November 1, 2023
In Grabowski's craftily constructed and deeply moving debut, ten girls and women in a decaying coastal Massachusetts tourist town respond to the death of a teenager at a house party. What happened to Lucy--an artist and outsider afflicted by epilepsy--gradually emerges from the ten thoroughly distinct points of view, including those of Lucy's best friend, her mother, the high-school principal, and other townspeople, most young adults who barely knew her. Chapters--each of which could stand as a short story on its own--hopscotch from the hours before, during, and after the party, and into the months that follow. As Lucy comes into focus, so do the insular town and surprising connections among the women, most of whom have mother-daughter issues at least as complicated as Lucy's. Grabowski so deftly depicts the web of relations in this oppressively tight-knit community that it becomes evident how life changes for one character reverberate even for those who would seem outside her sphere of influence.
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March 15, 2024
A debut novel set in Nashquitten, Massachusetts, a fictional seaside town. A teenager named Lucy Anderson dies under mysterious circumstances at a party after a video clip of her having a seizure circulates on social media. Grabowski's novel traces a constellation of relationships, some intimate and others incidental, between Lucy and 10 girls and women who narrate the stories of their lives. Jane, who attends the local public high school with Lucy, is having an affair with her math teacher and caring for her mother, who suffers from a mysterious chronic illness. Natalie has managed to escape her hometown but ends up working for the tyrannical founder of a San Francisco startup, a decision she begins to regret when she returns home to care for her sick mother. Mona, Natalie's best friend and old rival who told her to take the job, crosses paths with two of the girls who witnessed Lucy's accident. Though Mona knows one of them and can tell they're both in trouble, she chooses to do nothing. "[This] is the danger of girls," Mona thinks. "They look like deer when, really, they're wolves." This comment could just as easily describe Mona and many of the novel's female protagonists. Women suffer at the hands of men--besides the lascivious math teacher, there's also a coach who's sexually assaulting students--but they also betray each other. That's the case with Maureen, president of the high school PTA. She's a do-gooder who is trying to organize a memorial for Lucy, but she also has made a huge moral compromise to protect her daughter, who did something cruel. Each of the book's first-person sections takes its time, fully immersing us in the dreams of its narrator and how those dreams have been frustrated. Girls and women inflict damage on each other by being too close and not recognizing their own agency and power, and also because disrupting systems of male privilege is difficult. Grabowski's exploration of all these ideas makes for a brilliant novel. A smart, propulsive novel attentive to the ways community can fall short.
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