Hyacinth Girls
A Novel
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
A stunning debut about a young teenager on the brink and a parent desperate to find the truth before it's too late.
Thirteen year old Callie is accused of bullying at school, but Rebecca knows the gentle girl she's raised must be innocent. After Callie is exonerated, she begins to receive threatening notes from the girl who accused her, and as these notes become desperate, Rebecca feels compelled to intervene. As she tries to save this unbalanced girl, Rebecca remembers her own intense betrayals and best-friendships as a teenager, when her failure to understand those closest to her led to tragedy. She'll do anything to make this story end differently. But Rebecca doesn’t understand what’s happening or who is truly a victim, and now Callie is in terrible danger.
This raw and beautiful story about the intensity of adolescent emotions and the complex identity of a teenage girl looks unflinchingly at how cruelty exists in all of us, and how our worst impulses can estrange us from ourselves - or even save us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The particular cruelty that can arise in female adolescent friendship is explored in Frankel's engaging but somewhat convoluted debut. Its problem arises from two interesting but complicated stories that vie for the reader's attention. Callie's story is primary a 13-year-old orphan raised by her mother's best friend, Rebecca. The seemingly carefree girl is suddenly accused of bullying someone in her class, and shortly thereafter Callie's life unravels. Rebecca, ber devoted to her charge, can't help but get involved and reflect on her own problematic teen friendships notably the bond she had with Callie's free-spirited mother, and a debacle with her other close friend Lara, who ended up marrying Rebecca's cousin, Curtis. The contrast between Rebecca inadvertently antagonizing Lara years earlier (she made fun of Lara's stuttering, not knowing Lara was within earshot) and what's now possible in the age of social media is eye-opening, and Frankel perceptively depicts a spiral of brutality that would have been unheard of just a decade ago. But the combination of these story lines results in unnecessary melodrama and undermines the impact of Callie's riveting story.
