Age of Consent
A Novel
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3.5 • 8 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
"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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brainerd's bracing debut focuses on a group of teens at a Connecticut boarding school and an ill-spent summer in New York City. In 1983, classmates Eve Straus and Justine Rubin struggle with difficult parents, teenage crushes, and predatory older men. Eve comes from a wealthy Park Avenue home, while Justine is from New Haven, where her parents are struggling middle-class theater owners, too preoccupied with their own lives to guide her away from trouble. Justine is already growing rapidly into adulthood, while Eve is intent on losing her virginity. Eve's English instructor trades grades for sex with her; Julia already lost her virginity at 14 to a family friend. While the goings-on at Griswold Academy are engaging, and a musical interlude at a David Bowie concert is well written, Brainerd's tale really takes off in the second half, when the two young women navigate a gritty summer in New York City, where Eve works at a SoHo art gallery and Justine moves in with Eve's childhood friend. Eve and Justine eventually drift apart, each envying the other's life. On the surface, Brainerd's tale is a nostalgic trip into the early 1980s, including an inspired evocation of the Downtown art scene, but her teenage characters make the greatest impact. The takes on parental neglect and the ways young women are taught to see sex as transactional make this more than a throwback. Alice Whitwham, the Cheney Agency.
