Book Review- Emily Layden's All Girls

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for providing me with a copy of Emily Layden’s novel, All Girls, in exchange for an honest review.

When a scandal from 1995 surfaces and threatens to damage the reputation of Atwater, a prestigious all-girls boarding school in Connecticut, the current students are left wondering who they should trust. All Girls is set during a single school year and each chapter focuses on a different student, high school girls with different dreams and personalities, all trying to navigate the complications of adolescence.

As the girls are being dropped off at Atwater in the fall, they encounter a series of yard signs alerting them to a rapist living on campus. In 1995, a student named Karen Mirro was raped by a teacher and subsequently expelled from Atwater based on an unrelated incident, with no repercussions for the rapist. Now in her late thirties, Mirro has brought a lawsuit against Atwater, and although none of the students firmly know which of their teachers is a rapist, the rumors run rampant and distrust is high.

The school year proceeds with its usual traditions and events, as the administration struggles to keep the lawsuit on the down-low, including none of the staff being removed from their positions. The student paper tries to publish an edition regarding sexual assault and they are barred. Just as the signs mysteriously appear, so do other reminders of the case, such as flyers and unusual artwork. Atwater is awash in the mysterious identity of both the rapist and the person calling attention to Mirro’s case. But even more, the girls all worry if their beloved school, which is steeped in their identity, would protect them if they were in Mirro’s shoes?

I was initially drawn to All Girls because the blurb likened it to one of my all-time favorite novels, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep. I can see the reasons for the comparisons, but All Girls was especially timely due to recent revelations about my high school years.

I graduated from a prestigious arts high school in 1995 and during my time in school, I did not realize boundaries that were being crossed between teachers and students. Sure, I saw things that seemed borderline inappropriate, but like Layden’s characters, when you are a teen, sometimes the lines are very blurry. Since graduating, I have heard stories from close friends of very, very inappropriate behavior towards them from some of our male teachers. More than one story, more than one teacher, and certainly more than one female student being affected. It hurts to realize this was happening and that friends were hurting in silence.

All Girls highlights an issue that has been raised recently among my friends, that there has been a shift in the current generation. Mirro was of my generation, which now I realize, we didn’t feel that we had the ability to speak up. She files the lawsuit decades later, because now, during the “me too” movement, she feels like she has a voice. The current Atwater students may still have some uncertainties regarding boundaries and inappropriate behavior, yet they are also raised during a time when they know the power of their own voices. They know that it is vital to hold Atwater accountable for protecting its students.

Layden’s novel took me right back to my teen years, not that I attended a boarding school or grewup with social media, yet the teen emotions were similar. I enjoyed how she framed the novel with focusing on a different student for each chapter and how the book took us through a single school year. I liked having different voices tell their experiences of Atwater and Mirro.

I’m in my early 40’s, and I feel that hindsight gives me a different perspective then if I had read All Girls during my teen years. I have a stepdaughter who will soon turn fourteen, and I couldn’t help but see her in a few of the younger characters, particularly cringing with some of the cruelties that the girls inflict upon each other, hoping that she will make true friends and that her “bad decisions” are mild.

All Girls is poignant and beautifully written. I highly recommend it and I look forward to reading Layden’s future works.

Book Review - Fredrik Backman's Us Against You

Thank you to Atria Books for providing me with a copy of Fredrik Backman's latest novel, Us Against You, in exchange for an honest review.

PLOT- Fredrik Backman returns to his hockey obsessed Swedish town in Us Against You, the sequel to his 2017 novel, Beartown. Beartown is still experiencing the fallout of a scandal that pitted neighbor against neighbor: the rape of Maya, the daughter of the general manager of the Beartown Hockey Club, who accused the star player, Kevin, of attacking her. The town had divided loyalties, which only aided their biggest rival, the town of Hed, when some of the Beartown players defected to the enemy. 

Months have passed and it is summer. Kevin's family decided that it was best to leave town and although Maya will not longer have to see her rapist, she still feels hatred from those who supported him. Her father, Peter, is on the brink of having his hockey club shut down and is struggling to find a way to keep it going. He is approached by a business man with a proposition, yet the solution may come at the expense of the town residents.

LIKE- I love Fredrik Backman's novels. He creates characters that have a way of invading your soul; characters that are not only memorable, but ones who become part of your world. I was very eager to go back to Beartown. I have to qualify this though, Beartown is not a happy place. It's an economically depressed town in rural Sweden. Terrible and cruel things happen in Beartown. It is not a place that you'd want to visit on a vacation to Sweden! The characters are all rough around the edges and have a heavy distrust towards outsiders. They would not welcome you to Beartown. That said, they are also people who love fiercely and are protective towards their own. Beartown has a strong sense of community that is enviable. These are people who not only know their place in the world, but actively own it and are proud of it. 

Us Against You is even better than Beartown. I think it has to do with the story. Beartown is more straight-forward, where as Us Against You is all about the fall-out from the rape and people having to face how they initially reacted. It's complicated. People do not like to be confronted with their mistakes. Change is hard, change is complicated. Us Against You has a large cast of characters and each is written with complexity.

I feel that Backman's story is timely with regards to the current policy climate, both in America and around the world. It's not a political story per-se , but it is a story about human emotions and about working with different view points or more than that, the idea that people value things at different levels. It seems simple that people would agree that Kevin should be punished for raping Maya, but it's not simple. Beyond the idea that some people think Maya has lied, some characters feel that things like having a winning hockey team are more important than Maya's pain. It's not really the hockey though. For example, some of the parents of other kids on the team, kids that may not be as talented as Kevin, but who have worked hard for many years, will lose their opportunity to be on a winning team if Kevin isn't allowed to play. They don't see it as simple as a Kevin/Maya issue, now that their child is affected. Right or wrong, their value is on their own child, over Maya or Kevin. As in real life, Backman's characters are complicated because they value different things at different levels, which can lead to not only misunderstandings, but an "Us Against You" attitude. Communication is impossible when people build up their walls. 

I've been to a hockey game, but I can't claim to know much about the sport. Us Against You is a story about the people of the town, but it also has a lot about the game of hockey. It's a testament to Backman's writing skills that he can keep a non-hockey fan engaged in the parts of the story that involved the hockey games and practice. I felt energy in his writing that made me excited about the sport. 

DISLIKE- My only negative is occasional bouts of sluggish pacing. 

RECOMMEND- Yes! If you've not already read Beartown, read it first. Us Against You is a must read for Beartown and Backman fans!