Author(s): Emily Perkins

Fiction

A hip alternative to the babble of 'chick-lit'
Julia, Rachel and Chicky, best friends since they can remember, have lived all their lives in one small town. Now, they have finished school and must set a course for the rest of their lives. But the choices which they face are far from clear-cut, especially after Miranda, a young woman from the city, arrives in their midst. Miranda is teaching a summer school. She is beautiful and compelling, and she makes it her mission to force her charges to confront who they are and what they want from life. But she also sets things somehow askew; the girls no longer enjoy their easy camaraderie; Julia, especially, comes to yearn for the city, for sophistication, elegance, knowledge, and a life which revolves around more than hanging out by the town bridge with boys who screech around on the gravel in stolen cars and drink beer from a hose.

Julia eventually escapes to the city, but it rapidly becomes apparent that Miranda is not quite what she seemed to be that summer. She too has known doubts, humiliations and - most importantly - betrayals. The New Girl is a novel about learning how to live in one's skin; about strategies for deceiving the world and learning how to let the world in; above all, it is a novel about how we become who we are.

(Preceeding text courtesy www.panmacmillan.com.au)

Paperback (B-Format)