![]() ![]() ![]() Mothers are often absent here, and girls must chart their way to adulthood without parental guidance. Orringer has, like Esther Freud, the feel for young people in peril, and is prepared to wade into the sort of troublesome, dark territory explored by Barbara Gowdy and Lorrie Moore - and like those authors, she has a great ear. ![]() The reader is immediately drawn towards the children whose mother is in the late stages of cancer, and who must fend for themselves among others already brutalised by loss. The tone is set in the first story, "Pilgrims", which kicks off intensely and doesn't let up. The dangerous world comes at them, seemingly intent on breaking their limbs, their homes and sometimes their hearts. In Julie Orringer's exquisite collection of short stories, teenage girls learn to negotiate more than the elements. ![]()
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