Starry Night: A Novel

by Isabel Gillies

Overview

Sometimes one night can change everything. On this particular night, Wren and her three best friends are attending a black-tie party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to celebrate the opening of a major exhibit curated by her father. An enormous wind blasts through the city, making everyone feel that something unexpected and perhaps wonderful will happen. And for Wren, that something wonderful is Nolan. With his root-beer-brown Michelangelo eyes, Nolan changes the way Wren's heart beats. In Isabel Gillies's Starry Night, suddenly everything is different. Nothing makes sense except for this boy. What happens to your life when everything changes, even your heart? How much do you give up? How much do you keep?

Starry Night by Isabel Gillies is a tender, romantic young adult novel about first love.

“A love story set in New York's Upper West Side, Starry Night follows Wren through her first heartbreak.” —VOYA

“There is much to recommend about this touching story of first love, betrayal, and friendship.” —Booklist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250068224
Publisher:	Square Fish
Publication date:	10/27/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	727,430
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 5.50(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile:	790L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Isabel Gillies, known for her television role as Detective Stabler's wife on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, has published two memoirs, Happens Every Day (a New York Times bestseller) and A Year and Six Seconds (both Scribner). She graduated from New York University with a BFA in film. Isabel lives in Manhattan with her family.

Read an Excerpt

1

I don’t think you fall in love for the first time until something—or someone—feels dangerous. I don’t mean dangerous like going to jail, I guess I mean just different, really different. Different can feel dangerous, right? Like, I think it feels dangerous when your heart pounds so hard you are sure it’s visible beating under your shirt. Or when you can’t sleep, or catch your breath, or concentrate or listen, or when you turn a different color just thinking about his face, or when your relationships with your friends get all screwed up, or when you fight with your parents. When you change direction or your mind, or when tears fall and fall from your eyes for hours, when your whole life gets put in a Cuisinart—all because of a single person.

For me, it started at the Metropolitan Museum of Art—and it ended there too. I am not sure why the person that I was in love with ended up not wanting to be in love with me anymore. A part of me thinks it was my fault. That does not sound strong, but sometimes I don’t feel strong. What I hear is that we are very strong, we girls. Girls can do anything. We are leaders, we are intuitive, we are brave, we are smart, and we kick ass. “If women ran the world there would be no war.” Don’t you hear that? Maybe it’s true; I’m certainly not going to say it’s not. But if it is true, then how come it can all feel so impossibly fragile? How come you can feel like you are getting it entirely wrong?

Maybe boys don’t feel strong all the time either. I don’t think van Gogh felt strong, and look at everything he did—look at The Starry Night. Maybe you can feel fragile and still paint The Starry Night. Or maybe you can paint it because you are fragile. Maybe you can be strong and still be vulnerable, like a tree. Have you ever seen a tree filled with birds? There seems to be one on every branch, and then all of a sudden something happens, possibly from the atmosphere or the surroundings—or maybe not, maybe it’s something having to do with the tree itself, the branches, the leaves, or even the roots—that causes the birds to fly away in unison. And the tree is just left there—maybe strong, but left.

The air felt loaded in New York City. It was one of those days that you feel not only that the temperature will drop but that something tremendous is going to happen. It was a Monday in November and the sky was so blue it was violet, uninterrupted by clouds. The sidewalks reflected the shining sun, making us squint. Mostly, I remember this crazy wind. It was so forceful you knew the meteorologists were talking about it on the news. It was pushing us around. Our hair whooshed over our heads, twisting and tangling. Sometimes a gust would come and push us a few steps faster than we would have usually walked. This made us squeal. We were suited up in fall sweaters and jean jackets over our dark blue, pleated school uniforms and black leggings, scarves wrapped multiple times around our necks. Fall clothes are the best ones—I feel so much safer in a cardigan and boots than in some flimsy dress and sandals. But even in our chunky sweaters, we weren’t dressed for the sudden change in weather; we weren’t at all ready for it. The three inches of leg between where the stretchy legging fabric ended and my ankle booties began were red with cold, and that was just the beginning. We were not protected. We should have been wearing parkas, heavy ones.

Farah, Padmavati, and Reagan were coming over to my house after school because that night my father, who is the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was hosting the opening of a new exhibit he was curating, and—for the first time—my friends and I were invited to the party. Charlie, our only friend-who-is-a-boy, was meeting us at my house. He was probably already there because his school, St. Tim’s, is on the west side of Manhattan, where we all live. My brother, Oliver, goes there too, but he’s a senior, and we are sophomores. St. Tim’s is just for boys, and Hatcher, where Farah, Padmavati, Reagan, and I go to school, is just for girls. It’s on the east side of Central Park. But it’s not really where we met. We’ve known each other since we were born. Since before we were born really. We’re Turtles. Fifteen years ago on the Upper West Side, five babies were born all in the same month (basically) to parents in the same reading group, all because of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It sounds like a reading group orgy—but really, it was because of the discussion of one hot scene and what happened when everyone got home.

Our parents called us the Turtles because turtles lay so many eggs at one time.

Text copyright © 2014 by Isabel Gillies

Editorial Reviews

A love story set in New York's Upper West Side, Starry Night follows Wren through her first heartbreak.” —VOYA

“There is much to recommend about this touching story of first love, betrayal, and friendship.” —Booklist

“Gillie's work as a momoirist certainly influences Starry Night, which is written with a perspective that only an adult's hindsight can bring. The conversational style will give readers the feeling that the protagonist is a close friend sharing her deepest secrets.” —School Library Journal

“An actor and memoirist's debut novel for teens explores the exhilaration - and heartbreak - of passionate first love . . . Authentic look at teen love and betrayal that will entertain and touch readers.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Still, Wren's rude awakening from her fairy-tale happiness will be felt deeply, alerting romantics to the danger of losing oneself amid the dazzle of infatuation.” —Publisher's Weekly

From the Publisher

Starry Night is a love story, though it's not the kind you might expect: It's laden with the rawness, emotional bewilderment and bad decision-making that come with infatuation and heartbreak, all the more intense when it's experienced for the first time…Gillies handles this novel about finding one's strength and growing up deftly and evocatively.

The New York Times Book Review - Jen Doll

07/21/2014
Gillies’s (Happens Every Day) first YA novel traces the rise and fall of a young artist’s first love and how it changes her course. High school sophomore Wren is eager to spend her junior year abroad, studying art in France at Saint-Rémy, where Vincent van Gogh created The Starry Night, her favorite masterpiece. But that’s before a magical evening at a Metropolitan Museum of Art event orchestrated by her museum director father. There, decked out in her mother’s precious Oscar de la Renta gown, Wren is swept off her feet by a handsome young musician, who appears to be just as enamored with her. Over the next few weeks their feelings for each other intensify, making Wren lose sight of her dream of going to France. The enchantment of the couple’s first evening together outshines the rest of the novel, making subsequent conflicts, squabbles, and betrayals anticlimactic by comparison. Still, Wren’s rude awakening from her fairy-tale happiness will be felt deeply, alerting romantics to the danger of losing oneself amid the dazzle of infatuation. Ages 12–up. Agent: Bill Clegg, William Morris Endeavor. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

2014-07-16
An actor and memoirist's debut novel for teens explores the exhilaration—and heartbreak—of passionate first love. Fifteen-year-old Wren attends a life-changing party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (her father is its director), where she connects with her older brother's new friend, the charismatic, talented musician Nolan. Though they've just met, the two feel a magical connection and slip away to another dance party with Nolan's friends, ruining Wren's borrowed designer gown and upsetting Wren's parents, who promptly ground her. Smitten Wren persists in seeing Nolan, despite her parents' wishes. Gillies captures the impulsive nature of teen love and its consequences along with nicely detailed secondary characters (little sister Dinah's a cutie with her own cooking show; Wren's parents draw sympathy with their real-time reactions to Wren's relationship). Authentically depicted mother-daughter clashes allow readers to empathize with besotted Wren and outraged Nan—especially when Wren abruptly abandons long-cherished dreams of attending an art program in France to be near Nolan. Occasionally, amateurish moments disrupt (some dialogue sounds stilted; some transitions are announced at chapter beginnings). Still, readers willing to overlook such moments will find themselves engaged by Wren and her headlong dash into love; the lack of tidy happy endings underscores the grittily real feeling of the story's emotional affairs. An imperfect but authentic look at teen love and betrayal that will entertain and touch readers. (Fiction. 12-16)

Kirkus Reviews