The Girls Who Grew Big
The new novel from the bestselling, Booker-prize longlisted author of Nightcrawling
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
AMAZON BEST PICK OF THE YEAR
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION
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'Written in big, beautiful prose that expands throughout the novel and leaves the reader full and satisfied … Leila Mottley’s grasp of human nature is unmatched' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS
From the author of the Booker nominated, international bestseller Nightcrawling: a novel about the joys and entanglements of a fierce group of teenage mothers in a Florida beach town.
When Adela Woods tells her parents she’s pregnant, they immediately send her a thousand miles away to stay with her grandmother in Padua Beach. The intention is that she will leave her baby in 'the forgotten Panhandle of Florida'. and resume her suburban life nine months later as though nothing happened. But Adela’s plans are soon washed away by the tide.
First, Adela meets Emory, a new mother determined to defy the expectations of everyone around her, returning to high school with her newborn baby strapped to her chest. Then she meets Simone, ringleader of ‘the Girls,’ a group of young mothers who create a village together in the back of her red truck—dancing, breastfeeding, raising their children and themselves.
The town thinks they’ve lost their way. Really, they are finding it.
But as they look for love, make and break friendships, navigate the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood, Adela, Emory and Simone also find themselves on an inescapable collision course with one another.
A novel full of heart and life and hope, set against the shifting sands of secrets and betrayals, The Girls Who Grew Big offers an explosive new perspective on what it means to be a young woman, a daughter, and a mother.
'Opens up the world of young mothers in its makeshift, sticky, struggling glory ... Sensuous, gripping and utterly believable' EMMA DONOGHUE
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mottley (Nightcrawling) offers an atmospheric tale of teen moms in the Florida panhandle. Most of the Girls, as they call themselves, are Black and estranged from their families, teenagers who "found each other" from out of their "singular aloneness." The novel opens with a flashback to the Girls' de facto leader, Simone, giving birth to twins in the back of her pickup truck, which becomes her home when her parents kick her out. In the present day, the perspective alternates between several narrators: Simone, who finds to her dismay that she is pregnant again; Emory, one of the few white characters, who is determined to apply to college, even as her baby is born during her senior year of high school; and Adela, a wealthy girl who is sent to Florida to live with her grandmother after her parents discover her pregnancy. Adela is mesmerized by the Girls from the moment she sees them twerking in a parking lot on her way into town ("Children mothering children and never apologizing for it," she observes). A propulsive love triangle between Adela, Simone, and someone's baby daddy drives much of the narrative, which is poignant without being saccharine, thanks to the sharply drawn characters and their all-too-human behavior. This distinctive coming-of-age story is worth seeking out.
