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by Joanne Proulx
Perfect for fans of Rick Moody, Lauren Groff, and Celeste Ng, a propulsive literary breakout about three suburban families whose lives spiral dangerously out of control after tragedy strikes.
Who suffers when the privileged fall?
One frigid winter night, Mia and Michael Slate's comfortable world dissolves in an instant when they discover that their best friend has cheated them out of their life savings. At the same time, a few doors down, their teenaged son passes out in the snow at a party - a mistake whose consequences will shatter not just their family, but an entire community.
In this arresting, masterful page-turner shot through with fierce, clear-eyed compassion and a sublime insight into human fragility, award-winning novelist Proulx explores the savage underpinnings of betrayal, infidelity, and revenge - and a multilayered portrait of love, in all its glory, that no reader will soon forget.
"Proulx (Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet, 2008) never takes the easy road. Instead of writing either pure suspense or feel-good family drama, she maintains a low level of intensity that never feels gratuitous or unrealistic. A solid choice for fans of suspenseful, character-driven fiction." - Booklist
"Gorgeously written, Proulx's narrative offers a fascinating plot and both a searing exploration of the butterfly effect of trauma and the uncanny persistence of love in improbable circumstances." - Publishers Weekly
"Proulx's teens are sympathetically if sharply realistic, but the ugliness of the adult characters' behavior bludgeons the reader beyond endurance. No one in this world of selfishness, vengefulness, and obsession seems aware what kind of collateral damage their bad choices - whether misguided or malevolent - will have on others." - Kirkus
"When I finished this novel, I wanted to tell everyone I knew to read it. It is one of the best, most important books I've read in a very long time." - Globe & Mail, Marissa Stapley
"With We All Love the Beautiful Girls, Proulx ... moves firmly into John Cheever territory, exploring with a keen eye and incisive prose the suburbs of quiet desperation, peeling back facades to reveal the desperation and violence that lurk just below the surface. When that violence comes to a head, the results are as devastating as they are unexpected." - Toronto Star
"We All Love the Beautiful Girls has the ability to leave a reader breathless. The plot twists are daring. The characters and their dialogue capture the ways in which adversity can alter people. Lovers' wounds are plastered across every page and the veneer of civility becomes shockingly thin. And yet, in the end, love, decency, and forgiveness triumph. Think of the 1986 David Lynch film, Blue Velvet, in which brutality lurks just beneath the surface of everyday life, then erupts ferociously before disappearing back into the depths." - Quill & Quire
"We All Love the Beautiful Girls is a gripping tale of love gone awry. In a lively plot filled with twists and turns, Joanne Proulx's characters flail about and pay a high price for their impulsiveness and rage. This is a book to keep readers glued to the page, and enthralled by the author's skill and wisdom." - Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of Two-Part Inventions
"An emotional thrill-ride that manages to capture the tenderness and rage unique to adolescence and middle-age, the heartbreak of first love, and the fragility of even the most stable-seeming marriage." - Zoe Whittall, bestselling author of The Best Kind of People
This information about We All Love the Beautiful Girls 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.
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