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Girls: A Novel
A New York Times Notable Book
In the unrelenting cold and bitter winter of upstate New York, Jack and his wife, Fanny, are trying to cope with the desperate sorrow they feel over the death of their young daughter. The loss forms a chasm in their relationship as Jack, a sardonic Vietnam vet, looks for a way to heal them both.
Then, in a nearby town, a fourteen-year-old girl d...more
In the unrelenting cold and bitter winter of upstate New York, Jack and his wife, Fanny, are trying to cope with the desperate sorrow they feel over the death of their young daughter. The loss forms a chasm in their relationship as Jack, a sardonic Vietnam vet, looks for a way to heal them both.
Then, in a nearby town, a fourteen-year-old girl d...more
ebook, 304 pages
Published
August 10th 2011
by Ballantine Books
(first published March 4th 1997)
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The best word I can think of to describe Frederick Busch’s novel Girls is muscular. The novel has certainly received much higher praise than that. Glamour Magazine called it “powerful,” and went on to describe it as an intriguing crime story although the novel’s real strength lay with the main character’s “growing insight about his marriage, his town, and himself [which] transforms this page-turner about lost children into a tender and eloquent examination of the even greater mystery that is the...more
When I finished this book last night at 2:00am, I got choked up. This was such a riveting, rhythmic literary work that if in movie form would be considered a classic film. Needless to say, it’s tied with “Sharp Objects” for the best I’ve read – though they are both in different categories so to speak.
Busch’s pace and structure was amazing and it was as if I was reading off silk. The prose was simple and beautiful, loaded with imagery and absolutely stellar dialogue. The characters were well deve...more
Busch’s pace and structure was amazing and it was as if I was reading off silk. The prose was simple and beautiful, loaded with imagery and absolutely stellar dialogue. The characters were well deve...more
Jul 12, 2010
Marguerite
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
contemporary-fiction
Frederick Busch packs a couple of mysteries into this modest (279-page) novel. The main characters, Jack and Fanny, are damaged but likable. Fanny is an ER nurse and Jack a campus cop who, after the death of their daughter, has a special sensitivity to missing girls. A 14-year-old girl from a neighboring town is his crusade here. Busch peels back layers in his story and keeps things taut and the reader engaged till the end. He also dishes out a couple of subplots (the principled librarian was a...more
I’ve always liked the way that Joyce Carol Oates has been able to capture the “quiet desperation” of muddling through in the average lives of New England and New York. I had never read anything of Frederick Busch before and this story of a nearly-broken former-cop-turned-security-guard and his near obsessive investigation into the disappearance of a local girl is impressively haunting.
Not really a whodunit – the investigation is almost secondary – but the book follows the protagonist's inexorabl...more
Not really a whodunit – the investigation is almost secondary – but the book follows the protagonist's inexorabl...more
"I was also scared. I had forgotten what the weight of the .32 made me remember--the kind of power a weapon concentrates at the end of your arm. You move it, and you're Mrs. Tanner's heroic Lord. You make decisions. Let this person's chest be opened. Let there be bone fragments in the air. Let his chest breathe, sucking for air through the maroon spittle on his sternum. The fear of his face begins at the end of your arm with the gun's dead heaviness, and you're scared, too. I'd even liked the fe...more
I finished this book a week or so ago but it still continues to come into my mind. There are things I either missed or did not understand that I am still pondering over. It was good enough to finish. There were parts that I found where I could not put the book down but most of it I muddled my way through seeing it as far more about the main character and his relationship with his wife where they could not speak the truth to each other - a very upsetting and annoying thing that just as what will...more
There is a line in this book that says about the main character, Jack, that he's the kind of guy that makes you want to take care of him. Busch has created a character that seems so real that I did want to take care of him. The book follows Jack through a few months of a long, hard winter in upstate New York as he and his wife of many years try to cope with the death of their baby. Jack gets pulled into an investigation of a missing girl which opens up all kinds of feelings for him that he is un...more
This was just an "emergency read"--I didn't have anything to read, was too sick to go to the library, and didn't have money (and was also too sick!) to go to the bookstore. So I just pulled this from my roommate's library. Unfortunately her tastes run to Jodi Picoult and Dean Koontz, sooooooo... there you go. This was a fairly basic story---Viet Nam vet (dates this book, doesn't it?) turned fancy-college security guard is asked to help the local police look for some missing girls, which brings u...more
This is the only Frederick Busch book that I've read, so I wasn't sure what to expect. His writing style reminds me a bit of Cormac McCarthy in that both of them can convey so MUCH with so FEW words. It's a gift to find a writer that with a single sentence gives you the feeling of being kicked in the gut with its power, and it happened with this book numerous times.
The subject matter, that of the disapperance of a young girl and the toll it takes on her family and our protagonist, Jack, is very...more
The subject matter, that of the disapperance of a young girl and the toll it takes on her family and our protagonist, Jack, is very...more
Overall, I just think I didn't really like the narrator of this book, and that's the real reason I didn't enjoy it. I loved that it was set at my alma mater, and I really wanted to love the whole book, since the author is a Colgate professor, but I just didn't enjoy reading it. I felt that the storyline would make great jumps in time without warning, and somehow we were always waiting for spring (hadn't months gone by?). He would say things like "I think I knew who was behind this" but not actua...more
While there were things I liked about this book (descriptions of snow on a steamy, hot and humid weekend, wonderful depiction of his dog and their relationship), I found the main character (a few of the characters!!) rather creepy. I figured out about two-thirds through who our murderer was, so I don't think the book was entirely clever, since I'm never one to do that! Story lines were left undone, and it presented the darkest side of human behavior.
Sep 26, 2011
Carolyn Brandt
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
50-books-challenge-for-2007
This book was hard to follow for me. Because of the writing style, I found myself re-reading sentences and paragraphs just to get the tone right and really understand what he was talking about. I think the main character was supposed to be sarcastically witty, but it didn't get pulled off...and the wife, although going through a tragic pain..annoyed me.
Dec 11, 2008
Sherry (sethurner)
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
mystery-thriller
"We started clearing the field with shovels and buckets and of course our cupped, gloved hands. The idea was to not break any frozen parts of her away."
This is a dark and emotionally draining story, though the writing sustains it.
This is a dark and emotionally draining story, though the writing sustains it.
Interesting characters and story. Kind of a murder mystery, but really more about a couple's loss of their baby and the slow disintegration of their marriage. (I loved the descriptions of the nameless family dog.)
This novel grew out of Frederick Busch's most oft anthologized (and wonderful) short story, "Ralph the Duck." It's grim and evocative and the book has stayed with me all these years.
An almost unrelentingly grim novel — but beautiful as well, as Busch creates characters of stunning complexity and reality. The entire cast of Girls comes alive in a way that few novels' characters do.
Like Robert Stone's A Flag for Sunrise, Girls is concerned with the prevalence of cruelty and injustice in the world, but in Busch's novel the focus is not political or historical, but rather more intensely centered on an individual life. "I am not a bad man," Jack, our narrator, insists near the e...more
Like Robert Stone's A Flag for Sunrise, Girls is concerned with the prevalence of cruelty and injustice in the world, but in Busch's novel the focus is not political or historical, but rather more intensely centered on an individual life. "I am not a bad man," Jack, our narrator, insists near the e...more
Really good to go back and re-read the first chapter when you've finished the book. I'm not even sure it neede to be there - could have been left as a postscript.
One of my all-time favourite books. Dark. So well written. Jack is a character I will never forget.
A university cop acting as detective in the middle of winter... not too much to enjoy.
I wanted to like this book. For a minute I thought it might be interesting, complicated, and a little dark. But as I got into it, I found that was all just kind of a poorly hung facade. The characters were as cold as the winter the story was set in, and the book itself was dull and unsatisfying. I'm glad to be done with it.
Busch is an uncelebrated great American writer.
Nice! Ralph the Duck turns into a novel.
mistry
Loved this book! Really gets inside the characters.
The love child of Dashiell Hammett and Richard Russo. Terrific.
I wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't get into it. At first it was the subject matter, because I hate dead baby things, but then I didn't care for the protagonist. The big reveals were so drawn out and late that I guessed them; that always puts me a little out.
I felt like I was walking through an architecture museum: beautiful examples of structure and counterbalance and fascia, but nothing wholly formed to transport me to another place.
I felt like I was walking through an architecture museum: beautiful examples of structure and counterbalance and fascia, but nothing wholly formed to transport me to another place.
This author's style is very similar to the style of most authors I enjoy reading. The abstract, descriptive style worked for this story but the twist at the end was somewhat predictable and not as heavy as I expected. The story up to that point was well done though sometimes too abstract and I had to reread some paragraphs to see what the author intended.
Like my rating indicates this book was okay. It was good enough to make it past my 50 page rule, but not good enough for me to finish it in the time the library allowed.
There were some parts of the book that I would get lost. One character would be saying one thing and another character would say something that seemed totally unrelated.
Bummer.
There were some parts of the book that I would get lost. One character would be saying one thing and another character would say something that seemed totally unrelated.
Bummer.
I didn't really enjoy the story, or the character. In fact, I hardly remember them. What I did enjoy was the descriptions of the setting - a fictional college town based very closely on my own alma mater. One scene in particular invokes a description of a particular road on campus so vividly, I can recal it turn for turn.
A wonderful, wonderfully written book. A detective thriller without a single detective (or cliche) in sight, and a deeply effecting, emotionally pitch-perfect read. Fred Busch--may he rest in peace--was a writer of immense gifts, wisdom, and good will.
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Apr 27, 2008 03:00am