Girls in Peril: A Novella (A Tin House New Voice) [Paperback]

Karen Lee Boren (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 26, 2006

During a single summer in the 1970s, five 12-year-old girls learn that danger lies not in the external world of their night runs, where parents and their own fertile imaginations conjure visions of anonymous murderers, rapists, and other mysterious figures lurking in the nearby woods. They discover it instead in places they never would have thought to look: in their neighborhood and homes; in uncomprehending parents who steal their time and freedom (and, in one bizarre case, a thumb); in the pull of an uncertain world beyond their all-important friendships; and in their own burgeoning sexuality. Karen Lee Boren’s vivid novel, the premier book in the Tin House New Voice series, begins in the collective first-person point of view, but gradually this reassuring group identity splinters as the girls mature and violence close to home threatens to split them apart for good.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set during the 1970s in a neighborhood of eastern Europeans near the shores of Lake Michigan, this crisp, self-assured tale of five girls, ranging in age from 11 to 13, is told collectively, in the first-person plural, and centers on the group's athletic ringleader, Jeanne Macek. The only daughter of 12 siblings, Jeanne possesses an extra, baby thumb on one hand that, rather than being an object of scorn, holds talismanic power for the group. Spying on the ripe, perfumed Mrs. Sobczyk as she makes her Avon lady rounds, or witnessing the sexual wrestling of Jeanne's dreamy older brother, Joey, and his lovely girlfriend up the street, they are fascinated and repelled. Then Jeanne's parents trick her into going away; on her return, the spell of childhood vanishes: Jeanne is pressed increasingly into household chores, and one of the girls, Lauren Jankowski, awakens sexually and challenges Jeanne's authority. Although it lacks the elegance of Jeffrey Eugenides's similar debut, The Virgin Suicides, Boren hits her mark. (June)
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Review

"The dreamy plural voice that tells this story evokes, perfect pitch, the collective comingled self of American female adolescence. In suburban summer boredom, Boren's girls endear and endanger themselves, playing games with deadly consequences. " -Antonya Nelson, author of Female Trouble

 

"In the vein of Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye or Jeffrey Eugenides' Virgin Suicides, here's a coming-of-age story with a little extra-a feel for the innocent omniscience of children, a stealing sense of dread, and (not least) a mysterious, fetishized third thumb. Boren's tale glows with the luminous hyperreality of nostalgia, without the rosy sentimentality that usually entails." -Peter Ho Davies, author of Equal Love

 

"Karen Lee Boren's novella beautifully differentiates itself by taking us inside that little-known tribe we call girlhood. Who can resist the restless energy, the strength, and the wholeness of these hard-worked midwestern daughters before they individuate into women in this perilous world? Not this reader. I love these girls." -Cathleen Calbert, author of Bad Judgment

 

"The collective voice that drives Karen Lee Boren's first novel is rapturous and steely-eyed at once, and this book beautifully captures the gestures and sensations-huge, tiny, exquisite, and excruciating-of her girls in peril. One is left elated by the power of this story, and marveling at Boren's skill." -Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land

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Product Details

• Paperback: 150 pages
• Publisher: Tin House Books (April 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0977312720
• ISBN-13: 978-0977312726
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #650,809 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Karen Lee Boren's fiction and nonfiction has appeared in journals and anthologies, including The Florida Review, Night Train, Karamu, Hawai'i Pacific Review, Dominion Review, Yemassee, Epoch. Cream City Review, BookForum, and Fourth Genre. Her novel Girls in Peril (Tin House Books) was selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award series. Her essay "The Quest" is included in The Best of Lonely Planet's Travel Writing. She has completed writing residencies at Norcroft, the Millay Colony for the Arts, Blue Mountain Artists Center, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is an associate professor at Rhode Island College and has recently completed a novel titled Month of Fire.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Graceful and Well Written, August 1, 2006

By 

Some College Guy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girls in Peril: A Novella (A Tin House New Voice) (Paperback)

This story, while not my favorite subject matter, was thoroughly enjoyable. Karen deftly exposes the oft-times secretive and complex world of girlhood in suburban America. She shows us this world with its fetishisms, power struggles and growing awareness of burgeoning sexuality with a graceful hand and an impressive precision of language.

The story is written in a first person collective point of view which serves to impart a sense of unity to the group of girls which could be difficult with a different perspective. This perspective, however, seems to be the source of the story's weakness as well. Because there is no particular character in whom we can invest our emotion, the story tends to feel a bit distant and lacking in the emotional force that accompanies the transition to womanhood and which surrounds the story's action. Overall, however, this story is an excellent debut from a writer from whom we can expect more fine, graceful and insightful works.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, September 7, 2006

By 

Carolyn MacCullough (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girls in Peril: A Novella (A Tin House New Voice) (Paperback)

I read this beautiful novella in one sitting. The prose is graceful, fluid, and poetic. The voice is assured and keenly observant, revealing the story of a group of pre-adolescent girls whose loyalty and love for each other begins to splinter as the outside world intrudes in a very unexpected way. There is no single protagonist-- the author uses the plural voice--which has the effect of making the reader focus on the group of girls as its own separate entity. A less talented writer may not have been able to pull this voice off, but Boren absolutely does with elegance to spare. Well worth the read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars peril?, September 2, 2009

By 

Blakely (los angeles) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Girls in Peril: A Novella (A Tin House New Voice) (Paperback)

throughout this short book, i kept asking myself what is so perilous to these girls? that would seem to be the obvious question, and it's never really answered. the girls do get into some dangerous situations, but it seems like the real danger is that they will have to become individuals. their lack of individualism is constantly apparent because the book is written in the first person plural. in fact, a couple of the characters have a name but not much more--when the book was over, i couldn't even give you a description of those characters because they didn't have any traits.

it's a well-written book, but i only gave it three stars because it was too short, and as another reviewer said, it's tough to really identify with any of the characters.