Serious Girls

Maxine Swann's book is something rare. She has put her finger on something about my personal (and what I assume is a universal) experience about becoming a woman that I don't think I have ever read before. Reading this book had a powerful impact on me akin to my first experience of reading "Catcher in the Rye" and others, but it was so beautifully unique. I will cherish this book for a long time to come.

Two girls, emotionally stranded by their parents, set out to compose their own characters and lives with deliberate fearlessness. They choose their futures with an arbitrariness that older people, with their weighted experience of consequence, can ill afford.Swann conveys a wealth of rich sensations with delicious immediacy. I can't think of another work in recent years that captures so many incomprehensible, fleeting perceptions with such wonderous, nuanced specificity.

Swann writes with startling honesty and vivid detail about the intense relationship between young girls. This is a hauntingly beautiful book. She has invited us into a world of complex and subtle friendship. From the first pages we care about Maya and Roe and their serious if not heartbreaking search for love and meaning. I could not put this book down. It is wonderful to be reminded how compelling good writing can be. And it is rare to find this kind of gem in the bookstores.

Anyone who happened upon Maxine Swann's "Flower Children" in Garrison Keillot's collection of Best Short Stories of 1998, know that there were more great stories coming. Her novel "Serious Girls", plants one of these flower children in young adulthood. Totally unprepared to fit in socially, Maya begins her exploration of life beyond her mother's garden. Maya's observations of the natural world are as keen as her insights into the persons around her. The description of an ice storm at her boarding school will invoke chills. Ms. Swann's "Flower Children" left the reader frightened for the fate of the spawn of the love and peace generation. Could children "raised" totally unstructured, unfettered, and exposed to all the mysteries of adult life at an early age possibly cope with life in the malls of America ? "Serious Girls" delivers the answer. The author's fine ear for dialog and gift for unfolding this unique story keeps the reader embedded in the novel from beginning to end. I'm hoping for much more writing from Ms. Swann.

"Serious Girls", by Maxine Swann is the most beautiful, poetic, funny and profound piece of literature I have read in many years. I can't think of a more enlightening novel written about the life of two young girls and their first experiences in this world. The subtelty, courage, and the vivid descriptions of the author make me think that these two characters, Maya and Roe, unveil what we secretly knew all along about women, in spite of all the usually more banal or cliche depictions of them. A true small miracle.