Serious Girls: A Novel [Paperback]

Maxine Swann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 2004

Sixteen year olds Maya and Roe form an intense friendship when they find themselves cast as outsiders at an all girls boarding school. Sharing their life stories, and curiosity about the adult world, they wonder how they might become “people” with style and character as opposed to school girls. When they move beyond the enclosed world of the school to experience the city, and relationships with men, both girls test the line between an emerging sense of self and its total disintegration.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

"When does your life assume its course?" wonders 16-year-old Maya, who is lonely at boarding school until she meets Roe, a fellow outsider. The girls form an intense friendship, taking long walks, trying on clothes (and new identities) in thrift shops, and confiding their fears and questions: "What makes a person a person?" "When does life begin?" Vowing to have "interesting lives" and to collect experience above all, they enter troubled sexual relationships: Maya with a 32-year-old man, and Roe with a physically abusive teenager. The affairs end, after great pain, and the girls return to their philosophical wanderings, deciding this time to enjoy things, not just experience them. Roe remembers her dreams with a "hallucinatory precision," and the same can be said for Swann's prose. In her debut novel, she writes with a cool detachment and poetic beauty about the largest questions and the meaning in the smallest gestures. And in Maya's voice, she tells an elegant yet raw coming-of-age story about earnest young women who yearn to be "more distinct than the rest." Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Like Virginia Wolf or Doris Lessing, Swann has a sharp ear for young women's inner dialogues....Her spare prose (save for a smattering of lovely similes) and straightforward plot are interrupted, wonderfully by telling insights." --Alizah Salario, Ms. Magazine

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Picador (November 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312288018
• ISBN-13: 978-0312288013
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,458,036 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gem of a book, December 2, 2003

By 

Gwen B Strauss (Savannah, Georgia United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Serious Girls: A Novel (Hardcover)

Swann writes with startling honesty and vivid detail about the intense relationship between young girls. This is a hauntingly beautiful book. She has invited us into a world of complex and subtle friendship. From the first pages we care about Maya and Roe and their serious if not heartbreaking search for love and meaning. I could not put this book down. It is wonderful to be reminded how compelling good writing can be. And it is rare to find this kind of gem in the bookstores.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unforgettable novel, January 4, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Serious Girls: A Novel (Hardcover)

Maxine Swann's book is something rare. She has put her finger on something about my personal (and what I assume is a universal) experience about becoming a woman that I don't think I have ever read before. Reading this book had a powerful impact on me akin to my first experience of reading "Catcher in the Rye" and others, but it was so beautifully unique. I will cherish this book for a long time to come.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mesmerizing and intense, March 24, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Serious Girls: A Novel (Hardcover)

An intriguing novel of two young girls as they struggle to fit into boarding school and wait for "life to begin"...tand all the complexities that come with that assumption. Their maturation process and discovery of the outside world and sexual awakening is written with brutal honesty and exacting words that made it eerily painful but beautiful to read certain passages.