by Joan Silber
First published 1988
Pauline Samuels arrives in 1920s Greenwich Village fresh from Newark high school, her head full of bohemian dreams and romantic fantasies. The young woman plunges headfirst into the artistic ferment of the neighborhood, seeking the sophisticated life she has always imagined. She falls hard into her first love affair, then watches it crumble. Before she can recover, she throws herself into a second romance that proves equally catastrophic. Between these emotional disasters, Pauline navigates the political currents swirling through Village life, encounters new ideas about sexuality and freedom, and slowly begins to understand herself. Each failed relationship strips away another layer of her naive expectations, forcing her to confront who she really is beneath her carefully constructed dreams of artistic rebellion.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, coming-of-age, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, fish-out-of-water, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Greenwich Village, Newark
Period: 1920s
256 pages · Paperback · Penguin Books