Girls They Write Songs About: A Novel

by Carlene Bauer

Overview

A dazzling, decades-spanning tale of female friendship, love, and the pursuit of dreams in gritty 1990s New York City.

New York, 1997. As the city's rough edges are polished into something safer and shinier, two aspiring writers meet at a music magazine. Rose—bold and self-assured—is a staff writer. Charlotte—cautious and literary—is an editor. Initially wary, they soon recognize in each other an unmatched ambition. They become inseparable, turning every day into an adventure and believing they will undoubtedly achieve extraordinary things.

Together, Charlotte and Rose find and lose love, hit their strides and stumble, and make choices that resonate long past. They promise, "Don't ever leave me"—their favorite joke, but also their truest words. But then the steady rhythm of their sisterhood falls out of sync. They've seen each other through marriage, motherhood, divorce, career triumphs and defeats, and countless small but significant decisions. What will it mean if they must give up their shared dreams? Can they reconcile with the lives they've chosen and find peace with the ones they didn't?

In Carlene Bauer's smart, comic, and gloriously exuberant Girls They Write Songs About, two women reckon with the loss of the defining friendship of their lives and the countless ways all the women they've known have shaped them. This pulsing, lucid saga is a timeless story of the most essential bonds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374718596
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	06/21/2022
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Carlene Bauer is the author of the memoir Not That Kind of Girl and the novel Frances and Bernard. Her work has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Virginia Quarterly Review, n+1, The New York Times Book Review, Elle, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn.

Editorial Reviews

[A] glittering novel . . . [with] a sharpened eye for social detail and a Laurie Colwin-esque ear for dialogue . . . Girls They Write Songs About is a love story about two friends, but it’s also something thornier—a narrative about the cycles of enchantment, disenchantment and re-enchantment that make up a life.”

—Molly Young, The New York Times

“A novel that spans a decades-long friendship that’s so intense the reader feels like an uninvited third, munching popcorn in the corner of an $850-per-month Park Slope one-bedroom . . . So gorgeous, the dialogue so cutting . . . Devastating.”

—Alex Beggs, The New York Times Book Review

“[A] prickly-coy novel . . . Bauer is a crackerjack chronicler of the slide into humility which follows ravenous early adulthood.”

—The New Yorker

“A fantastically vivid story about feminism and friendship.”

—Mary Pols, People

“[A] heady, intimate tale of two young women who meet in the halcyon days of a New York music-magazine career . . . [and then the] coming-of-age glow gives way, inevitably, to the deeper shades and complications of grown adulthood.”

—Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

“A tender and honest novel about the friendships—and friendship breakups—that shape people just as much as their romantic counterparts.”

—Layla Halabian, Nylon

“Razor-sharp . . . With deftness and candor, Bauer tells a moving and thoughtful story of how desire and ambition change over time and how to make sense of the messiness of carving out a path and life of one’s own. A smart and beautifully rendered portrait of two women’s lives.”

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Gimlet-eyed . . . [Bauer] questions the choices women are forced to make as they age, and the way those decisions unite or divide them. [She] offers no easy answers nor pat conclusions, and her layered tale is all the stronger for it.”

—Kristine Huntley, Booklist

“This novel [isn’t] about a friendship, but about questions . . . What’s the cost of the non-traveled road? Or more simply. . . ‘What did we want?’ . . . Bauer doesn’t give neat answers, but the questions she’s asking . . . are good [ones].

—Brendan Buck, Newcity Lit

“This excellent novel—strange and artful, full of texture and feeling—reads like a Sentimental Education for our time; I am so glad that a talented woman has written it.”

—Vivian Gornick, author of Unfinished Business

“Finally, a book that stirs up the fire, hilarity, heartache, and power-plant energy of female friendships. Remember how it felt to be young and invincible in New York City? Remember the friends who showed up at your gorgeously gritty apartment bearing new and sparkling worlds? Girls They Write Songs About carries the giddy, smart, shouted exuberance of free young women right up and into the question that haunts us as we grow: How, oh how, did I get here?”

—Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book

“Humor and feminist passion power Girls They Write Songs About. A riot grrrl anthem of a novel, one that celebrates female longing, accomplishment, and sisterhood while never forgetting the high stakes of our internal struggle to respect ourselves.”

—Darcey Steinke, author of Flash Count Diary

“An instant feminist classic—a profound and perfect book about girls raised to believe they can be anything, but who as women learn the truth: every choice requires sacrifice, and freedom isn’t free. Carlene Bauer—a Kate Chopin for the twenty-first century—brings a fiercely funny, exquisitely brave, vibratingly intellectual voice to a world of bar flirtations, I-love-this-song enthusiasms, envy, ambition, and regret.”

—Ada Calhoun, author of Also a Poet

From the Publisher

★ 2022-03-30
A deep friendship takes shape and dissolves in New York City.

“Rose and I moved to New York to be motherless,” begins narrator Charlotte as she sweeps us into the idealism of her 20s in the late-1990s New York literary scene. She and Rose meet in the office of a music magazine where Rose—intense, ambitious, erratic—works in the staff writer position for which Charlotte—meticulous, careful, self-effacing—was passed over. What begins as professional and sexual jealousy morphs into an intimate friendship as the two bond over their commitment to independence and artistic integrity. Alcohol-soaked parties, abortions, marriages, affairs, a divorce, a death in the family, secrets, and betrayals all ensue, related with such cleareyed precision and honesty that only on the rarest of occasions does it tip over into sentimentality. Charlotte’s narration rings true for the discerning writer and editor she is; the prose is razor-sharp and utterly devoid of clutter. Though as a person she drifts and waffles—“What did we want?” is a common refrain throughout—as a storyteller, she never loses focus. Motherless though Charlotte had once aspired to be, as her 20s turn into her 30s and early 40s, the question of motherhood creeps in, whether from her surroundings in stroller-laden Park Slope, from friendships that drift when children arrive, or from a confrontation with the child of a married man with whom she’s had an affair. With deftness and candor, Bauer tells a moving and thoughtful story of how desire and ambition change over time and how to make sense of the messiness of carving out a path and life of one’s own.

A smart and beautifully rendered portrait of two women’s lives.

Kirkus Reviews