The New Girl

by Emily Perkins

In her second novel The New Girl, Emily Perkins tells a tale of three indivisible friends brought up in a small town whose comfortable childhood certainties are thrown into turmoil by the arrival of a mysterious and troubling stranger from the city. It is a hot, sultry and unsettling summer in a tiny provincial town where very little happens. Or so it seems. Inseparable friends Julia, Chicky and Rachel finish school and await their exam results, worrying as much about how they will pass the summer as how they will spend the future. Boys are for sex, girls are for true friendship and what to do about now being almost grown up is a pressing matter to be avoided. Unexpectedly into their midst comes the raven-haired, red-lipped Miranda, exuding urbanity and challenging the youth of the town to a risky voyage of collective self-discovery.

In flight from her own messy sexual affairs, Miranda is intrigued by the "threeness" of Julia, Chicky and Rachel, "like crass, mall rat versions of Chekhov's sisters, they seemed utterly different yet very much at ease with one another". Her relentless curiosity extends to their parents, lovers and friends. Gradually Miranda seduces the town and those not seduced are scandalised. None are safe from the emotional upheavals sparked by Miranda's search for the personal tragedies and family secrets on which the small town is built. For some, the consequences will be fatal. For all, they will be irreversible.

The small town, sweltering landscape and unforgiving city are unnamed in The New Girl, giving the novel the enduring feel of a modern fable. Against this archetypal landscape, the emotional terrain of Perkins' characters is sharply drawn in a story that makes tangible the points of connection and rupture between people and their often oblivious impact on each other. In a style that crackles with the hormonal electricity of youth, Perkins has captured exactly the aching expectation of young women on the brink of adulthood. The intimate "threeness" of Julia, Chicky, Rachel--and all their school friends--is challenged at exactly that fork in the road where their deeply entwined amity and enmity is finally divided over who wants to stay and who wants to go. By tracing the pathways of those who attempt to get away, Perkins ensures that the difficulties of escape and the brittle realities of urbanity are not sentimentalised. --Rachel Holmes

Genres: Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Friendship, Coming Of Age

272 pages, Hardcover

First published April 6, 2001

About the author

Emily Perkins is a writer of contemporary fiction, and the success of her first collection of stories, not her real name and other stories, established her early on as an important writer of her generation. Perkins has written novels, as well as short fiction, and her writing has won and been shortlisted for a number of significant awards and prizes. She was the 2006 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow, and she used the fellowship to work on her book, Novel About My Wife, published in 2008. She is an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award winner (2011).

Reviews

[Venice White · Rating 4 out of 5]

Julia, Chicky and Rachel have just finished high school and are anticipating a long, hot summer with nothing to do in their tiny town in the middle of nowhere, when Miranda arrived from the big city to take summer classes. A group of kids sign up, all of whom have never spent real time together before. Miranda challenges them to learn who they are as people and what they can become outside of a town they just happened to be born in. Her classes range from sharing their favourite colour and why, to the boys swapping clothes with the girls and vice versa.

The town is never named, the details focusing on the descriptions of heat and the way information makes its way through a small town. The three girls begin the summer as close as ever but Miranda’s arrival triggers a breakdown, as well as a breakthrough for all the thoughts and feelings the town hadn’t previously allowed Julia to explore.

Miranda reminded me of the glamorous and slightly aloof older girl that every young girl idolises. She spends weeks with these teenagers, getting them to open up and be honest with themselves so that they can achieve more than the hopeless town they happened to grow up in. Yet she shares nothing of why she chose to spend the summer with them and then ends up going back to the world she ran away from (which was almost always her intent). The lack of growth on her part is quite devastating when you consider her potential which is just as important as the recent grads.

Coming-of-age/rites-of-passage novels are often the most honest stories I read and I am constantly in awe of people who can capture what is the most confusing time for anyone and transform it so that the reader is both experiencing the rawness of being a teenager but also feels a great deal of fondness towards that time of life – and even sympathy for characters that would be nightmarish in real life. Reading this also gave me the delicious feeling of my creative brain switching on and made me want to write and write and write.

[Dora Okeyo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got bored in the middle of this book and had to set it aside for three days. It felt like Julia was busy trying to be Miranda, and Chiky couldn't stop cursing at everyone- and that made me lose trail of the story.When I continued, it felt okay.

[Cheryll · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was bored by page 74. I couldn't relate to the characters. What was the plot? What was the point of the story? I forced myself to finish it and actually quite enjoyed the last 50 pages. Doubt that I'll read other books by this author though.

[Monica · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not as enjoyable for me as her previous work and I don't quite know what the point was of this book. The boredom of adolescence?

[J A D A · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t actually finish the book because it was wayyyy too boring to finish

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author Emily Perkins (no relation) has written a coming-of-age novel about naivety, wisdom, and how things are not always as we think they are. Set in an unnamed, generic small town, and then in an unnamed, generic large city, the story centres around three friends: Julia, the talkative intellectual, Chicky, the buxom floozy, and Rachel, the quiet waif. The mix of types makes one wonder what they see in each other, but it's probably that they are all ostracized by their peers, and they found companionship in their refusal to conform. Their parents are on the sidelines, but they all have backstories with idiosyncratic difficulties that continue to affect them and their children today. Enter Miranda, a woman from the city, who has come to run a summer encounter group, but who ends up turning the hamlet upside-down, and fleeing just when it gets tricky - almost the antithesis of what she is preaching in her life-lesson class. Old or young, every one of the major and minor characters is deeply flawed, which makes it all the more layered. The narrative becomes a little messy towards the end and seems to flail about without a clear sense of purpose, but much of the book is well-written and interesting, aimed at teenage girls but still interesting to male readers.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Doesn't have quite the verve and tension of Perkins' "Novel About My Wife." But still, enjoyable characterization. I guess this is the kind of story you'd call a "slice of life" sort...which can be good, but occasionally doesn't really take you anywhere. It was very readable, but felt pretty anti-climactic at it's finish. The small town setting is interesting, and the author successfully conveys a sense of suffocation. (so so hand gesture)

[Jade17 · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing reminds me of an unpolished Siri Hustvedt... will read more of Perkins' work that's for sure.

[Sarelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thought that this was OK, though not great. I haven't read anything else of hers though would still be keen to do so.

[Erica · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*