Fine Young People
A Novel
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- $279.00
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- $279.00
Descripción editorial
In this "smart, irreverent secret history" novel, a high-school senior investigates the death of a star hockey player at her elite Jesuit school, where she discovers the rot at the heart of the institution—and the truth about her own past along the way (Stewart O'Nan).
Frankie is a good daughter, a loyal best friend, and a model student, coasting through her final semester at an elite Catholic prep school in a wealthy Pittsburgh enclave. But acceptance to her dream college leaves her unmoored. When a classmate takes his life after posting a cryptic message about Woolf Whiting—a former student hockey player who died in a presumed suicide years earlier—Frankie and her best friend, Shiv, decide to investigate Woolf’s death as part of their journalism class project.
As the community mourns, a muffled conversation between Frankie's mom, who teaches history at the school, and the priest who teaches her philosophy class draws the girls further into unraveling the mysterious life and death of Woolf. Frankie speaks to his sister, now a high-powered lawyer in New York; his former girlfriend, who Woolf's mother is convinced knows more about his death than she has revealed; and his best friend. As she does, she discovers much more than she expected about the history of her supposed elite education—and the truth about her own past.
With a wry, send-up-the-patriarchy, wise-beyond-her-years narrator and a page-turning plot, Fine Young People is a cold-case mystery with a Hitchcockian twist and a portrait of a young woman searching for meaning in a world that values achievement above all else.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this solid outing, Bruno (Ordinary Hazards) uses the framework of a whodunit to drive at deeper questions of faith and family. At the prestigious St. Ignatius High School in the Pittsburgh suburbs, seniors Frankie Northrup and Shivani Badlani research the mysterious death 18 years ago of St. Ignatius hockey star Woolf Whiting for their journalism class. Woolf was found dead of an apparent overdose in the school's chapel during a game, and police labeled the incident a suicide after a halfhearted investigation. Frankie and Shivani interview those closest to Woolf at the time—his girlfriend, Susanna Mercer; his sister Maddie Whiting; and his best friend, Vince Mahoney—learning explosive secrets about their school in the process. Bruno nimbly toggles between Frankie and Shiv's investigation and chapters chronicling the lives of their interview subjects, playing fair with readers and planting a few major surprises along the way. For the most part, though, mystery-solving takes a backseat to weightier considerations of growing up and finding purpose. A less assured writer might have failed to make it all coalesce, but Bruno pulls it off, thanks to her keen sense of what's at stake for her teenage characters and Frankie's indelible voice. It's a winner.
