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by Shoshana von Blanckensee
A vibrant queer Jewish debut "teeming with heart, angst, love, and self discovery" (Emily Austin) about a young woman who, caught between the expectations of others and her own evolving desires, is forced to make a series of fraught, life-altering decisions.
It's the summer of '96 and best friends (and secret girlfriends) Hannah and Sam are driving across the country from Long Beach, New York, to the fabled queer paradise of San Francisco, free from the harsh gazes of their neighbors and the stifling demands of Hannah's devout Orthodox Jewish mother. In San Francisco, they will finally be together as a real couple, out in the open, around other queer people ... even if the move means leaving behind Hannah's beloved Bubbe.
When the financial strains of West Coast living push the girls to start stripping at The Chez Paree—yet another secret Hannah must keep from her family—Hannah feels trapped. Sam wants her at the club, but Hannah hates stripping nearly as much as she hates disappointing Sam. Then Hannah meets Chris, an older butch lesbian, who is immediately taken with her. Desperate to stay in San Francisco and away from the leering men at the club, Hannah proposes an escort arrangement.
But as Hannah falls deeper into Chris' world and Sam starts to meet new queer friends, a rift forms between them. Without Sam, who is Hannah? And what does San Francisco mean to Hannah alone—a space rich with queer possibility or an intimidating, unfamiliar place just as lonely as the one she'd left behind? An achingly tender and resonant story of survival, first love, and growing up queer in the '90s, Girls Girls Girls is a piercing exploration of the choices we make in the thrilling and often confounding search for ourselves and home.
"Von Blanckensee deftly explores Judaism, addiction, grief, queer desire, found families, generational trauma, and cultivating the courage to be yourself. This debut is a beautiful portrait of being young, queer, and free (or "frei," as Bubbe would say). Though steeped in nostalgia, this coming-of-age debut is timeless." —Kirkus Reviews
"[A] propulsive debut...von Blanckensee pulls the reader in with this voice-driven and heartfelt narrative, and adds texture with gritty details of 1990s San Francisco. This delivers the goods." —Publishers Weekly
"With heartfelt introspection and refreshing self discovery...von Blanckensee's fast-paced debut sensitively portrays how the process of showing one's authentic self is a return home. Readers may be taken by the novel's exploration of what it means to '[b]egin and end. Then begin again.'" —Booklist
"We're in for a fun-as-hell ride with this one. It's raw and authentic, nailing what it's like to be weird in high school." —Debutiful
"Girls Girls Girls floored me—the nostalgic angst and agony of it, the heat and beauty and tenderness. Shoshana von Blanckensee puts it all on the page so viscerally: lust, hunger, death, sex, grief, love and every other thing a human body is and does. It's completely extraordinary." —Catherine Newman, New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich and We All Want Impossible Things
"An immersive and emotional debut teeming with heart, angst, love, and self-discovery. This is a queer, touching, and charming book that makes you feel at home in 1990s San Francisco through the eyes of a messy and endearing lesbian." —Emily Austin, author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and We Could Be Rats
This information about Girls Girls 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.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Shoshana von Blanckensee lives in Berkeley, California, with her partner and kids. She is an Oncology Nurse by day, and a writer by any available moment. Girls Girls Girls is her debut novel.
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