"A total time machine--I loved it."
--Maria Semple, New York Times bestselling author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette
Named One of the Best Books of the Summer by Good Morning America, Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, and PopSugar
A daringly honest, sexy debut novel about three young women coming of age in 1980s New England and New York--a bingeable summer read
It's 1983. David Bowie reigns supreme, and downtown Manhattan has never been cooler. But Justine and Eve are stuck at Griswold Academy, a Connecticut boarding school. Griswold is a far cry from Justine's bohemian life in New Haven, where her parents run a theater and struggle to pay the bills. Eve, the sophisticated daughter of status-obsessed Park Avenue parents, also feels like an outsider amidst Griswold's preppy jocks and debutantes. Justine longs for Eve's privilege, and Eve for Justine's sexual confidence. Despite their differences, they form a deep friendship, together grappling with drugs, alcohol, ill-fated crushes, and predatory male teachers.
After a tumultuous school year, Eve and Justine spend the summer in New York City where they join Eve's childhood friend India. Justine moves into India's Hell's Kitchen apartment and is pulled further into her friends' glamorous lives. Eve, under her parents' ever-watchful eye, interns at a SoHo art gallery and navigates the unpredictable whims of her boss. India struggles to resist the advances of a famous artist represented by the gallery. All three are affected by their sexual relationships with older men and the power adults hold over them, even as the young women begin to assert their independence.
A captivating, timeless novel about friendship, sex, and parental damage, Amanda Brainerd's Age of Consent intimately evokes the heady freedom of our teenage years.
Genre: Literary Fiction
--Maria Semple, New York Times bestselling author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette
Named One of the Best Books of the Summer by Good Morning America, Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, and PopSugar
A daringly honest, sexy debut novel about three young women coming of age in 1980s New England and New York--a bingeable summer read
It's 1983. David Bowie reigns supreme, and downtown Manhattan has never been cooler. But Justine and Eve are stuck at Griswold Academy, a Connecticut boarding school. Griswold is a far cry from Justine's bohemian life in New Haven, where her parents run a theater and struggle to pay the bills. Eve, the sophisticated daughter of status-obsessed Park Avenue parents, also feels like an outsider amidst Griswold's preppy jocks and debutantes. Justine longs for Eve's privilege, and Eve for Justine's sexual confidence. Despite their differences, they form a deep friendship, together grappling with drugs, alcohol, ill-fated crushes, and predatory male teachers.
After a tumultuous school year, Eve and Justine spend the summer in New York City where they join Eve's childhood friend India. Justine moves into India's Hell's Kitchen apartment and is pulled further into her friends' glamorous lives. Eve, under her parents' ever-watchful eye, interns at a SoHo art gallery and navigates the unpredictable whims of her boss. India struggles to resist the advances of a famous artist represented by the gallery. All three are affected by their sexual relationships with older men and the power adults hold over them, even as the young women begin to assert their independence.
A captivating, timeless novel about friendship, sex, and parental damage, Amanda Brainerd's Age of Consent intimately evokes the heady freedom of our teenage years.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Brainerd eloquently captures the struggles of her teenage characters while simultaneously providing insight into their screwed up parents. Familiar, funny, and totally unforgettable." - Molly Jong-Fast
"A witty, perceptive, and compulsively readable book about the cool girls I'd wish I'd been in high school." - Patricia Marx
"In her striking debut, Amanda Brainerd conjures a cast of vibrant and troubled young characters who find themselves thrown into an adult world of money, treachery, and sexual politics. She captures the raw and painful tangle of female adolescence with emotional honesty and precision. Set in the 1980s, a tumultuous Age of Consent, and brimming with evocative detail, the story travels across the glittering and gritty landscapes of an elite boarding school and New York City, leading its vulnerable protagonists to the discovery that charmed lives often hide the most dangerous circumstances." - Jane Mendelsohn
"A total time machine--I loved it." - Maria Semple
"A witty, perceptive, and compulsively readable book about the cool girls I'd wish I'd been in high school." - Patricia Marx
"In her striking debut, Amanda Brainerd conjures a cast of vibrant and troubled young characters who find themselves thrown into an adult world of money, treachery, and sexual politics. She captures the raw and painful tangle of female adolescence with emotional honesty and precision. Set in the 1980s, a tumultuous Age of Consent, and brimming with evocative detail, the story travels across the glittering and gritty landscapes of an elite boarding school and New York City, leading its vulnerable protagonists to the discovery that charmed lives often hide the most dangerous circumstances." - Jane Mendelsohn
"A total time machine--I loved it." - Maria Semple
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Used availability for Amanda Brainerd's Age of Consent