Serious Girls A Novel

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. Maxine Swann ''s short story "Flower Children" won the Cohen Award, the O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize, and was included in The Best American Short Stories (1998). Serious Girls is her first novel. When her grandmother insists that Maya be sent away to boarding school, the sixteen-year-old feels as if her life has turned a new page. Raised in the remote countryside by her bohemian mother, Maya finds herself isolated in the all-girl community. When Roe, another outsider, becomes her friend, the two girls tell each other their life stories and speculate as to what growing up might mean. How do they become "people" with style and character as opposed to schoolgirls? Their desire to be adults takes them beyond the closed world of the school into the local town and the city, where they experiment with being grown up'”shopping in thrift stores, confronting their fears as they try on new identities, and wondering about sex. Both girls test the precarious line between an emerging sense of self and its total disintegration in the very different relationships from which they eventually escape, wiser and secure once again in their friendship and curiosity about life. "Like Virginia Woolf or Doris Lessing, Swann has a sharp ear for young women''s inner dialogue . . . Her sparse prose (save for a smattering of lovely similes) and straightforward plot are interrupted, wonderfully, by telling insights."'” Ms. magazine "Exquisitely written . . . Serious Girls confronts the complex torments of adolescent loneliness and un-belonging."'” The New York Times Book Review "Swann''s promising debut is a delicate, clear-eyed distillation of teenage girls'' greatest concerns: identity, authenticity, and sexual power . . . Serious Girls palpably evokes the frustration and anxiety of growing up."'” Entertainment Weekly "A compelling Swann dive into the psyches of boarding school girls."'” New York magazine " Serious Girls is a commanding debut from this soon-to-be well-known writer . . . A masterpiece in the making: a thoughtful, insightful piece of literature that will hopefully be read voraciously by many."'” King Features Weekly Service "Writing in compressed, staccato prose, Swann deftly evokes the narrator''s febrile, gauze-cloaked consciousness . . . It is not the Brontës she recalls but Albert Camus'' The Stranger ."'” Time Out "Maxine Swann''s novel is a small masterpiece. Entirely original, it combines Proust''s attention to the inner life, Colette''s understanding of the body, and Jean Rhys''s knowledge of the dangers of love."'” Mary Gordon, author of Spending "Mysteriously, magically, Maxine Swann seems to know both the secrets of adolescence and of writing a wonderful novel. I don''t know when I last read a book that so beautifully conveys the intense yearnings of that period between childhood and adulthood. Serious Girls is an exhilarating debut."'” Margot Livesey, author of Eva Moves the Furniture " Serious Girls is mesmerizing, utterly timeless, and captures in an amazing way the mysterious and contradictory nature of adolescence."'” Eliza Minot, author of The Tiny One "Exquisite and compelling, this story, is like watching a chrysalis unfold. We witness potential injury, as two young girls move forward in search of ''self,'' and we observe with renewed awe the power of resilience'”a lovely book."'” Elizabeth Strout, author of Amy and Isabelle "She writes with a cool detachment and poetic beauty about the largest questions and the meaning in the sm

Mazime Swann's short story "Flower Children" won the Cohen Award, The O. Henry Award, the Pushcart Prize and was included in The Best American Short Stories. Serious Girls is her first novel.

"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