The Burning Girl

衛報報導：Claire Messud: ‘Maybe in 50 years there won’t be novels’再堅韌的友誼，也有分道揚鑣的時候。即便彼此相愛，也不可能完全地了解彼此。《紐約時報》暢銷作家Claire Messud繼《樓上的女人》(The Woman Upstairs)之後，又一感情濃烈、縈繞你心的小說。童年的誠摯友誼，到了青春期，便因為家庭背景與社交生活的不同，而逐漸淡去。Julia與Cassie打從幼稚園開始就是要好的朋友，她們共享秘密，一起探險，曾經攜手進到鎮外樹林中已經廢棄的精神病院中。在那裡，他們編造故事，扮演不同的角色，兩人都希望將來可以離開這個讓人喘不過氣來的無聊小鎮。Julia 的母親是個為雜誌撰稿的作家，父親是個牙醫。Cassie的母親是個在安寧病房工作的護士，父親據說在她還是嬰兒的時候就過世了。當Cassie的母親讓Anders Shute醫生住進家裡後，Cassie的衣著打扮、交友狀態便開始遭到嚴厲的抨擊，時不時被母親禁足家中，而Shute對Cassie存有的不良遐想，也點燃了Cassie離家的引信。Cassie的離家之旅，不僅使她步入險境，也打碎了她與Julia之間堅固的友誼。在Julia以第一人稱的敘述中，我們看見了Cassie如何消失在她生命中的過程。A bracing and hypnotic portrait of the complexities of female friendship from the New York Times bestselling author of THE WOMAN UPSTAIRS.Julia Robinson and Cassie Burnes have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge: while Julia comes from a stable, happy, middle-class family, Cassie never knew her father, who died when she was an infant, and has an increasingly tempestuous relationship with her single mother, Bev. When Bev becomes involved with the mysterious Anders Shute, Cassie feels cruelly abandoned. Disturbed, angry and desperate for answers, she sets out on a journey that will put her own life in danger, and shatter her oldest friendship. Compact, compelling, and ferociously sad, THE BURNING GIRL is at once a story about childhood, friendship and community, and a complex examination of the stories we tell ourselves about childhood and friendship. Claire Messud brilliantly mixes folklore and Bildungsroman, exploring the ways in which our made-up stories, and their consequences, become real.