Synopsis
Tell me what you can't forget,and I'll tell you who you are . . .
Cat is fifteen and the lonely new girl in town. Until she meets her neighbour, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat is quickly lured into Marlena's roller-coaster orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blonde hair. Within one intense, obsessive year of friendship, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby.
Decades later, when a ghost from that pivotal year surfaces unexpectedly, Cat must try again to move on, even as the memory of Marlena calls her back.
Marlena is a riveting, intelligent and brilliant novel from debut author Julie Buntin.
'If you loved The Girls, this is for you . . . totally addictive' Grazia
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Reviews
“The gifted young writer Julie Buntin has written a novel of deep and exquisite intelligence, humour and riveting sensitivity. A terrific debut”Lorrie Moore
“Julie Buntin captures that unique moment at the precipice of adulthood with emotional honesty and insight. She writes the kind of piercing, revelatory sentences you have to read to whomever is near, sentences you find yourself remembering years later”Jonathan Safran Foer
“In Marlena, Julie Buntin revitalizes a classic story making it all her own with sensuous, vibrant prose and a narrator who feels deeply even as she feints certain painful truths about herself. In these pages I not only saw my own story, I came to understand it better. Many readers will too. This is a fierce and gorgeous debut”Edan Lepucki, bestselling author of California
“Marlena slayed me. Gorgeously written, with a sense of place so perfect I didn't even have to close my eyes to pretend I was there, this novel is rich and sensuous and beautifully conceived. Buntin writes about the all-consuming bond between teenage girls with urgency and suspense and despair. I loved every word”Anton DiSclafani, bestselling author of The After Party and The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls
