The Burning Girl

Claire Messud

• 31 augustus 2017
• 9781405538138

Samenvatting:

'Addictive, memorable, intense'
Lionel Shriver on The Woman Upstairs

'A joy to read . . . her observations
are funnily astute, brimming with wit
and imagination'
Independent on The Last Life

'I can think of few writers capable of such thrilling
seriousness expressed with so lavish a gift'
Evening Standard on The Hunters

'Brilliant, a masterpiece'
Independent on Sunday on The Emperor's Children

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE 2024 BOOKER LONGLISTED THIS STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY
A Vogue Top 10 Book of the Year and New York Times bestselling author, a bracing and hypnotic portrait of the complexities of female friendship

Julia Robinson and Cassie Burnes have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge: while Julia comes from a stable, happy, middle-class family, Cassie never knew her father, who died when she was an infant, and has an increasingly tempestuous relationship with her single mother, Bev. When Bev becomes involved with the mysterious Anders Shute, Cassie feels cruelly abandoned. Disturbed, angry and desperate for answers, she sets out on a journey that will put her own life in danger, and shatter her oldest friendship.

Compact, compelling, and ferociously sad, The Burning Girl is at once a story about childhood, friendship and community, and a complex examination of the stories we tell ourselves about childhood and friendship. Claire Messud brilliantly mixes folklore and Bildungsroman, exploring the ways in which our made-up stories, and their consequences, become real.