Sorority
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Sisterhood is forever…whether you like it or not.
Prep meets Girls in White Dresses in Genevieve Sly Crane’s addictive literary novel about sorority life, female friendship, and coming of age on a college campus—a voyeuristic look inside the secrets, rivalries, and loyalties that shape life in a sorority house.
Twinsets and pearls, secrets and kinship, rituals that bind sisters together in a sacred promise of loyalty. Certain polished images come to mind when people think of sororities. But behind the doors of this house, the reality of Greek life is far more complicated.
In this sharp and unflinching portrait of college sisterhood, Genevieve Sly Crane reveals the hidden tensions, power dynamics, and emotional struggles simmering beneath the surface of sorority life. These women are not simply sharing late-night confidences—they are navigating jealousy, ambition, family expectations, and self-destructive choices that threaten to fracture their carefully constructed world.
At the center of the story is Margot, the sorority sister whose death casts a shadow over the entire house. Each chapter unfolds through the voices of the women who surrounded her, revealing their grief, guilt, secrets, and shifting loyalties as they grapple with what happened.
With elegant, observant prose and a keen eye for character, Crane explores the fragile bonds of female friendship and the pressures facing young women in a culture obsessed with perfection. Beneath the glittering surface of college life lie deeper questions about identity, belonging, and the price of acceptance. Woven throughout the novel are subtle echoes of classical mythology, reminding us that power, rivalry, and destruction have always shaped the lives of women—even among the modern sisterhood of Greek life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Crane's ingenious debut follows the members of a sorority house at an unnamed Massachusetts college in the years before and after the death of sorority member Margot. Each chapter functions as a standalone story that ties back to the house. Some characters, like Margot's roommate and lover Deirdre, have narratives that revolve largely around Margot's life and death. For other characters, she's a background figure as they navigate their fraught senior years of high school or their difficult post-college years. Anorexic Shannon and straight-edge Lucy grow up best friends, but pretend not to know one another as they get ready to rush. Wry, outspoken Twyla, whose dying mother wants to be euthanized, checks into a hospital after cutting herself. Hoping to end her pregnancy, Kyra goes to the first clinic she finds online and is dissuaded by its antiabortion staff. Crane's prose is thoughtful and haunting; she expertly brings characters to life, especially in Jennifer's chapter, in which a plain high school senior sees herself in her Crucible character Mary Warren: "I was rehearsing for many years of trying to be seen by the women I hated and adored," she says. The multivoice structure fits the story perfectly, resulting in a stellar examination of female relationships.
