The Girls' Almanac
-
-
2.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $6.99
-
- $6.99
Publisher Description
The Girls' Almanac chronicles the lives of Jenna and Lucy—two thirty-something women who desperately long for a true friend—as well as the lives of the women and men who have touched them: friends, lovers, parents, and neighbors. Set across the Northeast—through suburban neighborhoods, preppy camps, island resorts, and Ivy League colleges—as well as far flung locales like Ecuador and Iceland, The Girls' Almanac traces the friendships of women willing to risk both self-consciousness and intimacy, loss and betrayal, in pursuit of a proper best friend. Exploring the fascinating closeness and distance that female friendships encompass, The Girls' Almanac reveals the map of Jenna and Lucy's interconnected lives, and ultimately their pathways to each other.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A weblike illustration mapping the relationships of 30 characters kicks off Franklin's (Liner Notes) collection of interconnected short stories that run the gamut from half-baked to heartbreaking. The latter includes the first story, "Early Girls," about Lucy, who mourns her dead fianc as she helps prepare for her mother's second wedding. Lucy's friends Jenna, who finds solace in baking, and Gabrielle, a doctor struggling with the idea of motherhood, have rough goes of it in other stories. Franklin has a harder time with male characters, as in "Community Service," in which a teacher who works at a school for "troubled teens" breaks down while supervising his students on a community service outing. Franklin's smart prose sees her characters through rites of passage including first sexual encounters, marriage and motherhood, as well as difficulties such as terminal illness, infidelity and widowhood. Highlights include "Kindling," a story of two roommates and their communal living situation; "A Map of the Area," set in an upscale hippie retreat; and "The Math of the Fourth Child," about two women trying to predict the future of a yet-to-be-conceived child. A handful of shorter pieces feel unfinished, but there are enough thought-provoking stories to pull readers through.
