Girls with Long Shadows
A Novel
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
"Tennessee Hill beautifully evokes the sensation of realizing just how many people have a hold on the person you are, the person you hope to become."—Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Run for the Hills
"What a delicate, hot-blooded tempest of a debut."—Amy Jo Burns, author of Wait for Me and Mercury
With the haunting, romantic voyeurism of The Virgin Suicides and the atmosphere and emotional intensity of Where the Crawdads Sing, an intoxicating Southern Gothic debut novel about identical triplets whose lives are devastated when their burgeoning desires turn deadly.
Identical triplets Baby A, Baby B, and Baby C Binderup were welcomed into the world as their mother was ushered out of it, leaving them nameless and in the care of their Gram, Isadora. Nineteen years later, the triplets work at their Gram’s crumbling golf course in Longshadow, Texas, where the ever-watchful eyes of the town observe them serving up glasses of ice-cold lemonade to golfers, swimming in the murky waters of the neighboring bayou, or slipping t-shirts off their sunburnt shoulders in hopes of attracting the kind of attention they are only beginning to understand.
Cautious Baby B watches as lustful Baby A and introverted Baby C find matches among the town boys. Even Baby B has noticed that the town’s golden boy seems to be intrigued by her, only her. Just as each girl’s desire to be seen for herself is becoming fulfilled, a seemingly trivial kiss is bestowed on the wrong sister, leading to a moment of unspeakable violence that will upend the triplets’ world forever.
Pulsating with menace and narrated with hypnotic lyricism, Girls with Long Shadows is an electrifying literary thriller that captures how female teenage angst can turn lethal when insecurities are weaponized and sibling bonds are severed. Tense, lush, and painfully beautiful, it forces us to consider the lengths to which we will go to claim our own personhood.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hill debuts with a self-conscious Southern Gothic about triplets so identical that their family calls them Baby A, B, and C. Each girl also resembles their mother, who died giving birth to them. The triplets have grown up in the care of their grandmother, Isadora, whom locals know as "the Manatee," owing to her frequent naked swimming in the bayou near her home in Longshadow, Tex. At 19, the triplets have grown into sultry Southern temptresses, who entice both their teenage friends and the grown men who golf at their grandmother's run-down country club. The triplets' games—which include swapping places to mislead lovers—take a serious turn when Baby B's boyfriend kisses the wrong sister, setting in motion a painful power struggle between the siblings that culminates in tragedy. Hill's prose is thick with atmosphere ("Iridescent snatches of shell and tail and gravel shone against me like treasure"), but some readers may be frustrated by the leisurely pacing, which only picks up at the very end. This lacks the thrust of Where the Crawdads Sing, but there's enough here to suggest good things from Hill to come.
