Big Girls
ALFRED A. KNOPF, 2007
At the heart of this electrifying novel is a crime of unfathomable horror and its effect on several profoundly different lives, each altered by a surprising connection to the others.
We hear four brilliantly realized voices: Helen, an inmate at Sloatsburg women’s prison serving a life sentence for the murder of her children; trapped within the maze of her own tortured mind, she is the subject of damning national attention. Dr. Louise Forrest, the recently divorced mother of an eight-year-old boy—the new chief of psychiatry at Sloatsburg. Angie, an ambitious Hollywood starlet, intent on nothing but fame. And Ike Bradshaw, a sardonic corrections officer, formerly a New York City narcotics detective.
As the alternating narratives unfold, we begin to wonder why Dr. Forrest has chosen Sloatsburg over the Park Avenue practice for which she was trained. And the origin of Helen’s psychosis is revealed—both its shocking depths and its disturbingly convincing rationale—as well as why she is desperate to make herself known to the young actress Angie.
The Big Girls is a powerful and audacious novel about the anarchy of families, the sometimes destructive power of the maternal instinct, the vitality and evil of communities, and the cult of celebrity—written in spare, evocative prose and with a bold understanding of the darkest, most hidden aspects of human nature.
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“...devastatingly accurate about why and how people, particularly highly intelligent women, approach the knife’s edge of desire and danger. The journey to the psychic underbelly is one [Moore] knows well, and she’s willing to follow its most treacherous paths.”
The New York Times Book Review — May 2008
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“Susanna Moore writes the way Frida Kahlo painted. Bits of bone; a lot of blood; beating hearts; serious beautiful women (often in white dresses), and in the margins of her extremely visual novels, gorgeous flowers and dark horsemen in black capes.".”
East Bay Times — May 2008
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“In spare yet hypnotic prose, Moore (One Last Look ) examines the bond between a young psychiatrist and a mentally ill patient in her devastating sixth novel, set at an upstate New York federal women's prison.”
Publishers Weekly — March 2008
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“In stark and unforgiving prose familiar to those who have read In the Cut, Susanna Moore brings to the forefront the grim realities of prison, where the wild and guilty are often forced to rail against the unforgiving surrounds, where innocence has no place, where violence is unfortunately a way of life.”
Curled Up — May 2008