Books

“In Grabowski’s craftily constructed and deeply moving debut, ten girls and women in a decaying coastal Massachusetts tourist town respond to the death of a teenager at a house party . . . Grabowski so deftly depicts the web of relations in this oppressively tight-knit community that it becomes evident how life changes for one character reverberate even for those who would seem outside her sphere of influence.”

“Wow wow wow! Alina Grabowski’s original and brilliantly written novel, Women and Children First, tells the story of a teenager named Lucy Anderson, who dies at a high school house party, through the lens of ten different women narrators—from her best friend to her principal to her mother. I was dazzled by the author’s skill and emotional depth.”

“Girls and women inflict damage on each other by being too close and not recognizing their own agency and power, and also because disrupting systems of male privilege is difficult. Grabowski’s exploration of all these ideas makes for a brilliant novel. A smart, propulsive novel attentive to the ways community can fall short.”

“Reading Women and Children First is like encountering the best kind of puzzle: each of its pieces is a small marvel, elegant and finely wrought. But then, the chapters snap together in the most satisfying way, creating a full picture that is as sweeping as it is nuanced. Here are friends and foes, past resentments and future hopes, all the mess and beauty of a complicated, compelling community. You won’t be able to put it down until the puzzle is complete.”

“While a young woman’s violent death sounds like the setup for a murder mystery story, in Grabowki’s deft hands, it becomes something richer and more surprising: an opportunity to capture the people left in her wake at their most honest, flawed, and insightful. Once you get into these women’s heads, they will never get out of yours.”

“Alina Grabowski is a writer of startling wisdom and deep humanity, and Women and Children First reads like a shimmering kaleidoscope of grief and longing, a magic lantern casting spectral illumination across dark surfaces of loss. Its pages smell like watermelon body lotion and low tide and fresh snow; they sing with moments of insight that took my breath away. Every voice is so compelling that I never wanted to leave it, but each new voice immediately seduced me—brought me into its own powerful portrait of intimacy and yearning, the cruelties and compassions that compose an adolescence, or a marriage. Together, these voices collectively summon the chorus of a ruptured community, gesturing toward those spiderwebs of attachment and betrayal that unmake us, and those moments of grace that ambush and rearrange us all.”

“Alina Grabowski’s Women and Children First (SJP Lit) is a novel built from interlocking stories, each chapter told from the perspective of a different woman living in a down-at-the-heels coastal New England town. In less capable hands, such rapid shifts might have a disorienting effect, but the book spins an entrancing web, the stories channeling the spirit of Mary Gaitskill and subtly building to reveal more and more about the town’s inhabitants. They include . . . the mother of a local teen who has died an untimely death. The cause of that death is the nominal mystery of Women and Children First, but the book is more about the secrets we keep and the lies we tell to remain hidden from one another.”

“Women and Children First so deftly captures the keen insight and angst of youth, girlhood, and womanhood. The characters here are complex and written with such intensity and clarity. The setting, too, is rendered in vivid, blue-hued color. This is a stunning, intricate, and multi-faceted debut from a writer whose long career I can’t wait to follow!”

“The rare book that lives up to such high-flying hype . . . a profoundly moving story. . . . Within the narrative, Grabowski masterfully explores the complexity of female friendships: their power to enrich, to sustain and to scar. . . . Grabowski has created a novel that illuminates these very human ties; how even through tragedy they can shift and strengthen, told by female characters who will stay with you long after you rest this book on a shelf.”

“Arresting and assured . . . a gorgeously attentive writer.”

“[A] original, deeply affecting debut novel about complex women and the community they carry.”

“Gorgeous and lush, heartbreaking and cruel, the story of this complicated community and the women who are trying to survive in it will stick with you, hauntingly present long after as young Lucy herself.”

“How often do you finish a novel, only to find yourself flipping back to the first page and thinking, I really ought to start that all over again? . . . Set in a struggling New England town, the novel unfolds through interlocking stories—something like Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge or Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad . . . a rich and textured book, with shades not only of those female authors, but also Mary Gaitskill or Lorrie Moore, through its investigation into female agency, power, and vulnerability.”

“Kaleidoscopic . . . Through her pitch-perfect summoning of this intergenerational female cast, Grabowski explores the fickleness of truth, the fallibility of memory, how difficult it is to really see those closest to us, and how easy it is to betray one another . . . Women and Children First serves as a reminder that not only do our actions and choices effect change, but so too do our stories.”

“You can smell the brine of the tidepools! Through the kaleidoscope of 10 women and girls who live in Nashquitten—mothers and daughters navigating tricky teenage years, complicated childhood friends, a principal and a councilor—we gain a fractured, complex understanding of the events leading up to and following her death. Grabowski conveys the gulf between friends, family, and community members, as well as the risks and rewards that can be reaped when trying to bridge the gaps.”

“A striking debut from a brilliant new voice. Alina Grabowski perfectly inhabits her characters, shining a light on the multidimensionality of both grief and adolescence with great humor and insight.”