An upmarket debut novel set at a New England all-girls boarding school - for fans of Sally Rooney, Taylor Jenkins Reid, J. Courtney Sullivan, and Curtis Sittenfeld - from a stunning new voice in women's fiction.
An all-girls boarding school in a hilly corner of Connecticut, Atwater is a haven for progressive thinking and feminist intellectuals. The students are smart, driven, and worldly; they are also teenagers, learning to find their way. But when they arrive on campus for the start of Fall term, they're confronted with startling news: An Atwater alumna has made a troubling allegation of sexual misconduct against an unidentified teacher. As the weeks wear on, and the administration's efforts to manage the ensuing crisis fall short, these extraordinary young women come to realize that the adults in their lives may not be the protectors they previously believed.
Emily Layden's All Girls unfolds over the course of one tumultuous academic year, and is told from the point of view of a small cast of diverse, interconnected characters as they navigate the social mores of prep school life and the broader, more universal challenges of growing up. The trials of adolescent girlhood are pitched against the backdrop of sexual assault, consent, anxiety, and the ways that our culture looks to young women as trendsetters but otherwise silences their voices and discounts their opinions. The story that emerges is a richly detailed, impeccably layered, and emotionally nuanced depiction of what it means to come of age in a female body today.
