Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jul 2015
320 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Georgia, Charlie and Alice each arrive at Harvard with hopeful visions of what the future will hold. But when, just before graduation, a classmate is found murdered on campus, they find themselves facing a cruel and unanticipated new reality. Moreover, a charismatic professor who has loomed large in their lives is suspected of the crime. Though his guilt or innocence remains uncertain, the unsettling questions raised by the case force the three friends to take a deeper look at their tangled relationship. Their bond has been defined by the secrets they've kept from one another - Charlie's love and Alice's envy, Georgia's mysterious affair - and over the course of the next decade, as they grapple with the challenges of adulthood and witness the unraveling of a teacher's once-charmed life, they must reckon with their own deceits and shortcomings, each desperately in search of answers and the chance to be forgiven.
A relentless, incisive, and keenly intelligent novel about promise, disappointment, and the often tenuous bonds of friendship, Bradstreet Gate is the auspicious debut of a tremendously talented new writer.
"Though correlations to Donna Tartt's classic The Secret History seem inevitable, Kirman's complex, serpentine yarn has teeth of its own, and it will find a welcome home in many beach bags this summer." - Publishers Weekly
"A sophisticated character portrait...A gripping read that shows the dark side of ambition." - Booklist
"This novel reads dangerously like Donna Tartt lite." - Kirkus
"Reminiscent of Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Un-put-downable." - Good Housekeeping
"Robin Kirman captures the moral hazards of assessing guilt and determining punishment in her intelligent, compulsively readable debut." - Jonathan Dee, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Privileges
"Smart, sly, and compulsively readable, Robin Kirman's brilliant debut not only heralds the start of an auspicious career, it shows that Kirman - whose writing calls to mind Donna Tartt - has already arrived." - Molly Antopol, National Book Award longlisted author of The UnAmericans
"Bradstreet Gate is a deeply satisfying read and Robin Kirman is a writer of true promise." - Amber Dermont, New York Times bestselling author of The Starboard Sea
"A deftly-plotted, unputdownable exploration into ambition's darker side." - Courtney Maum, author of I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You
"Robin Kirman's eye for detail is as thrilling as her gifts for plot and suspense. An exciting debut from a prodigious talent." - Elisa Albert, author of After Birth
"In a novel as compelling as it is complex, as sexy as it is smart, Robin Kirman strikes straight at life's most important questions - of guilt and forgiveness, the responsibility we have to others - and brings to life one of fiction's great characters, a man whose peculiar allure is so precisely drawn that I found myself drawn to him as powerfully as the students whose lives he forever alters, as powerfully as I was to this stunning book that is sure to leave you altered, too." - Josh Weil, author of The Great Glass Sea
This information about Bradstreet Gate was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Robin Kirman earned a BA in philosophy from Yale College and an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, where she served as a writing instructor in the English department. Robin lives in New York City and Tel Aviv.
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