The Burning Girl

A hypnotic portrait of the complexities of female friendship from the New York Times bestselling author of The Woman Upstairs.

'Lingeringly evocative, this is a heartfelt coming-of-age tale whose insights - into girlhood especially - are braided with mystery and menace' Mail on Sunday

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. 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 mother, Bev.

As the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge. 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.

'Messud is magnificent on female fury . . . The Burning Girl is an astute, subtle novel that conceals an eloquent and clear-eyed rage simmering beneath its surface' Francesca Segal, Financial Times

'Gripping' Vogue

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE 2024 BOOKER LONGLISTED THIS STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY

A bracing and hypnotic portrait of the complexities of female friendship

'Messud is a storyteller: the ability to compel and hold the reader's interest may not be the crown and summit of novel writing, but it's the beginning and end of it' Ursula K. Le Guin

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.