First published 1991
Elaine Risley stands in a Toronto gallery surrounded by her own controversial paintings. She has returned to the city where she grew up for a retrospective of her art. The familiar streets flood her mind with memories she thought she had buried. Three girls once ruled her childhood world with cruelty disguised as friendship. They taught her the brutal lessons of girlhood through exclusion, manipulation, and betrayal. Now an established artist, Elaine finds herself pulled back into those formative years when she learned what it meant to be a daughter, a friend, and eventually a woman. The past refuses to stay quiet as she walks through her old neighborhoods. Her paintings tell stories she never spoke aloud. She must finally face what those girls did to her and what she became because of it. The memories are both disturbing and oddly funny, revealing the complicated truth about growing up female. Elaine's journey forces her to untangle the knots between her past and present selves.
Genres: fiction, art, 20th-century, contemporary, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Toronto
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
Paperback · BDD Promotional Books Company
Content warnings: abuse, emotional-abuse, sexism