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Marlena by Julie Buntin

Literary fiction

Marlena

Debut

We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Julie Buntin, on your first book!

Early Release

This is an early release that's only available to our members—the rest of the world has to wait to read it.

by Julie Buntin

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Quick take

Buntin taps into something authentic, a core nugget so true that it feels like, in reading this novel, Marlena happened to me.

Why I love it

There is something compelling about certain teenage female friendships. The intensity that can rival a great romance. The desperate loyalty, the inexplicable need to pour your every secret into your friend vessel. The mutual adoration that’s near-sexual. Perhaps because, beyond 'œboyfriend' or 'œgirlfriend,' the nebulous shape of a best friendship requires more guarding and defending and is therefore more sacred. I don’t know. But I've had relationships like this, and so have most women I know. And Julie Buntin, in her raw debut novel, nails it.

Like any good novel, the stakes seem higher in Marlena. In this friendship, Cat, age 15, is recently plucked from her home and moved to a trailer park in northern Michigan as a result of her parents’ messy divorce. Her innocence, or maybe just naivety, are the yin to her new neighbor Marlena’s wild and worldly yang. Just two years older, but motherless and saddled with a meth-making father, Marlena has been exposed to much more of the darker sides of life.

Marlena is that kid you don't want your own kid playing with. Yet Cat’s aloof mother is too self-involved to notice or care. Without adult supervision, the girls’ friendship flourishes over the course of a rowdy year as they begin to skip school and get into'¦ pretty much exactly what you’d imagine they’d get into'“sex, drugs, booze, mischief, etc. While this freedom is new and thrilling to Cat, it’s more of the same, and then dangerously worse, for Marlena.

The book is framed as Cat, now an adult living in New York and struggling as a functioning alcoholic, is still forever remembering and reliving her youth, reeling from Marlena’s untimely death. In recounting her year of friendship with Marlena, Cat’s battle scars show, and she lays bare the emotional journey that was both the high-point, and low-point of her life.

The intimacy of the friendship, and the intimacy of the novel, jogged memories of my high school girlfriends. And, while I’ll definitely pass this book on to them (because really, it’s so excellent) I will also give them a warning that the story hits close to home: we too lost the wild, intoxicating friend in our group during our senior year (a girl very much like Marlena). It was painful in many of the ways that Cat feels, and in many ways that Cat could never feel. Buntin taps into something authentic, a core nugget so true that it feels like, in reading this novel, Marlena happened to me. Her loss became a loss in my life. And, even if this story is foreign to your own life experiences, it’s so deeply felt that it will, nonetheless, be worth the emotional ride.

Member ratings (2,906)

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Literary fiction
View all
Intermezzo
The Book of George
Real Americans
Dirty Diana
Wellness
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
The God of the Woods
Same As It Ever Was
Annie Bot
Bear
Mercury
True Biz
Family Happiness
The Husbands
The Lady Waiting
The Other Valley
Hard by a Great Forest
Good Material
The Bullet Swallower
Happy All the Time
Rental House
Alice Sadie Celine
Let Us Descend
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Shark Heart
Homeseeking
Transcendent Kingdom
Hello Beautiful
Dominicana
What's Mine and Yours
The Unsettled
Ask Again, Yes
Vladimir
Infinite Country
The Prophets
Normal People
The Verifiers
Salvage the Bones
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
I Have Some Questions for You
Black Buck
The History of Love
Age of Vice
Paper Names
The Light Pirate
The Secret History
The Kite Runner
Memorial
The Half Moon
Happiness Falls
The Gifted School
The Death of Vivek Oji
The Knockout Queen
Little Monsters
Yerba Buena
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Free Food for Millionaires
A Burning
The Mothers
The Water Dancer
Small Country
The Sympathizer
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Lot
An American Marriage
The Animators
The Mars Room
Exit West
White Fur
Woman No. 17
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
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Rainbirds
A Ladder to the Sky
Golden Child
The Goldfinch
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
& Sons
The Association of Small Bombs
Lolly Willowes
All Grown Up
Marlena
Signal Fires
Someday, Maybe
Woman of Light
Marrying the Ketchups
The Shards
Blue Sisters