The Burning Girl

Written by Claire Messud

Narrated by Morgan Hallett

A bracing and hypnotic portrait of the complexities of female friendship from the New York Times bestselling author of The Woman Upstairs.

Julia Robinson and Cassie Burnes have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge: while Julia comes from a stable, happy, middle-class family, Cassie never knew her father, who died when she was an infant, and has an increasingly tempestuous relationship with her single mother, Bev. When Bev becomes involved with the mysterious Anders Shute, Cassie feels cruelly abandoned. Disturbed, angry and desperate for answers, she sets out on a journey that will put her own life in danger, and shatter her oldest friendship.

Compact, compelling, and ferociously sad, The Burning Girl is at once a story about childhood, friendship and community, and a complex examination of the stories we tell ourselves about childhood and friendship. Claire Messud brilliantly mixes folklore and Bildungsroman, exploring the ways in which our made-up stories, and their consequences, become real.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Little, Brown (Hachette UK) Audio
• Release date: Aug 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781405538138

Claire Messud

Claire Messud was educated at Yale and Cambridge. Her first novel, When the World Was Steady, and her book of novellas, The Hunters , were finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award; her second novel, The Last Life , was a Publishers' Weekly Best Book of the Year; all three books were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship and the Straus Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with her husband and children.

Reviews for The Burning Girl

[bhowell_35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

a brilliant portrait of friendship

[carriewuj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

4.5 Wow -- this is written by someone who clearly remembers adolescence well. "There are the initial social struggles, and the agonies and embarrassments of puberty and the weight of the world that falls upon each of us in varying degrees, as we finally relinquish childhood's clouds of glory to live, ever after, in our earthly realm." It is so thoughtful and reflective in a way that adds layers to a pretty simple story of 2 childhood friends who grow apart in middle school as one begins to self-destruct. It is narrated by Julia and spans the years from 7th grade through 10th grade as her age-old (since nursery school) friendship with Cassie starts to deteriorated. New friends, different classes, different interests -- some of the classic divisions come into play here, but there is also something deeper and more ominous in Cassie's family relationships and dynamics. Julia observes: "It's a different story depending on where you start: who's good, who's bad, what it all means. Each of us shapes our stories so they make sense of who we think we are." Julia is telling backwards, so there are hints and foreshadowing of something bad coming down the line, but the bad is never as truly awful as it could've been. Through her introspection though, it's bad enough for someone whose life has been pretty smooth and sheltered. It reminded me a little bit of A Separate Peace, but for girls and also a bit of The Age of Miracles. Julia says "Sometimes I thought that growing and being a girl was about learning to be afraid." This is the cautionary tone throughout the book. What sets Cassie spinning and away from Julia is her single mother Bev (her father died in an accident when she was a baby she was told) finding a boyfriend who moves in, their pseudo-religious clamp down on her increasingly wild behavior and her deep unhappiness that results. She begins dating Julia's crush, Peter and launches from there to older, wilder boys. Julia mourns the loss of her friendship and her own loss of childhood. She and Peter become guardians of Cassie, watching her from afar, trying to "save" her when she reaches out to them occasionally, but they are in over their heads and so is she. A beautiful story with echoes of ramifications.

[oldblack-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My library keeps this short book as a large print version. This is ironic, given that the large print books are most commonly targeted at geriatrics such as me, and this is arguably a Young Adult book. Which demonstrates, I guess, that the librarians don't think it YA - and maybe they're right. I certainly enjoyed it and found the story to be appealing well beyond the story of the relationship of two teenage girls. It also addresses parent-child relationships, as well as the adult world and fairly fundamental existential questions in which we all have an interest. This is the first novel I've read by Claire Messud and I see my library also has her "The Woman Upstairs" (not in large print!) and I will definitely put that on my TBR list

[berly_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I like the voices in this one very much. Two best friends drift apart in adolescence. Their backgrounds and futures are very different. Do we ever really know another person? What drives them, what are their stories and how much of those are true? This book skillfully straddles childhood imagination and stark adult reality. The writing is beautiful, but there is a bleakness to this story; and the ending, although believable, left me sad.

[icolford · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Julia and Cassie are best friends growing up in tiny, insignificant Royston, Massachusetts. Their story, narrated by Julia, includes an active life of the imagination, which they share and act out during one otherwise unremarkable summer, in an abandoned mental asylum located behind a fence on private property. Julia begins her narration after events have conspired to take Cassie away from her and she has had time to reflect on the behaviour of her eleven- and twelve-year-old self from the vantage point of age sixteen or seventeen. Claire Messud’s psychologically astute and suspenseful novel focuses on the ways in which social peer pressures together with uncomfortable developments in Cassie’s domestic situation distance the girls from each other and finally put an end to the friendship by creating an impossible divide. Some of what happens is the inevitable result of growing up, as the two girls meet new people and develop new interests and friendships that don’t necessarily include the other. But it is Cassie’s home life that creates the decisive fracture into which Cassie withdraws, not just from Julia but from most of the people in her life. The trouble starts when her impressionable single mother, Bev, begins dating a man (by all accounts a bit of an oddball) who moves in with them and imposes a restrictive brand of discipline on adolescent, impulsive Cassie. Cassie, who while growing up regarded her mother as a close ally, sees this as a betrayal and rebels. The novel works brilliantly when Messud focuses on the two friends and their intimate bond. However, much of what takes place in the novel’s highly charged final act is relayed second-hand to the reader, by Julia but through a third party, Peter, Cassie’s former boyfriend. One can see why the structure of the novel makes this necessary, but as a narrative strategy it distances us from the action and blunts our emotional response. But this is a minor quibble. The Burning Girl is another exquisitely written work of fiction by a writer who wields her pen like a scalpel and whose ability to burrow beneath the surface of her characters’ lives is uncanny.

[perednia_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A moving novel about what it means to be a woman, a young woman, and how we tell ourselves stories in order to live.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the story of Cassie, as seen through the eyes of her best friend, JuJu. The two girls were inseparable, and during the summer before they began middle school, they wandered all over their small Massachusetts town and the woods around it, but beginning in middle school, the girls drift apart, a process that JuJu finds confusing and painful. She's been put in all the advanced classes, while Cassie falls in with the crowd of popular kids who party. From a distance, JuJu watches Cassie change and when she gains a stepfather, the speed at which she embraces a risky lifestyle increases. Messud has done a good job in writing her adolescent characters. JuJu is intelligent and insightful, but she's also full of the drama of the situation. The book is told from JuJu's POV and the author restricts the level of information the reader is given to what JuJu knows, which means we are getting Cassie's story in random sudden lumps and through hearsay, which was surprisingly effective, even as it meant that a lot of the questions remain unanswered.

[sblock_16 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was so captivated by this book that I got up in the middle of the night to finish it.

[enemyanniemae · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Pretty good novel about the deterioration of a friendship and a life. It was not a startlingly good book but it held my interest and I cared about the characters. (well, most of them) I liked that my questions weren't necessarily answered and everything was not necessarily tied up neatly with a bow. Recommended.

[veeshee-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Initially, I thought the story would be told from alternating perspectives. But no. It is told from Julia's perspective only. This really bothered me because the story is really about Cassie. It's about how Cassie's life changes as the girls enter grade 7. Julia is really just an onlooker who only receives information about Cassie after the fact. I would much rather have read this story from Cassie's perspective and seen her struggles through her eyes. I thought this would be a short read but it ended up dragging on for ages. Every time I thought that something important was going to happen, it didn't. I kept reading and reading, waiting for that closure, for that monumental moment in the novel ... but I got nothing. At the end, I wondered what was the point of this novel. Nothing really happens and we don't even get the true story from the main character! Yes, it is a story that shows how friendships evolve, change, and break apart through various forces but it was nothing new, nothing that blew me away. To be brutally honest, it just felt like a waste of my time. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to give this a 1/5 stars.

[mjspear_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Julia and Cassie have been friends since preschool, that is, within all of their conscious memory. They volunteer at the same local animal rescue center, prowl through town, and explore the wooded paths around their homes, including a suspenseful visit to a closed asylum. When puberty hits, the girls grow apart. Julia remains the archetypal good girl. Cassie makes more dangerous decisions and there are hints of family abuse -- physical, as well as emotional. It is Julia's story and it is one of heart-breaking loss and sadness. Beautifully written, this novel offers much to think about, Teens looking for high adventure and action, will need to look elsewhere but sensitive readers will be enthralled.

[casualfriday_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Claire Messud is a master of characterization. No, you don’t necessarily want to be friends with her characters, but you can’t stop reading about them. This book portrays beautifully the breakdown of friendship that so often happens when girl besties hit puberty. Julia is sad and mystified when her best friend Cassie abandons her for the faster set of “cool kids.” Julia is smart, college-bound, an all-around good girl, and some see Cassie as a bad egg she should be well rid of. Julia, though, sees the anger and dysfunction in Cassie’s overtly “Christian” family, especially after Cassie’s mother takes up with the Worst Boyfriend of All Time. The book is beautifully constructed and very moving, with enough melodrama and Gothic elements to make for a very realistic depiction of teenagers, the most melodramatic demographic on earth. I didn’t like it quite as much as The Woman Upstairs, but I liked it a lot.

[kamoorephoto · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reading this raw, detailed account of a friendship between two young girls felt like a long, slow burn, rather like seeing the long match that is on the cover burn and extinguish itself. This is because of how absorbed I became in the story and how wrapped up I felt in all the details of their lives and the account that ‘Julia’ gives us of her and her friend Cassie; it almost reads like an autobiography and it feels so raw and tragic. Messud’s writing is so fleshed out with the character’s every thought, and all the details of the world around them, and unlike a regular stream-of-consciousness (particularly of a teen or young-adult) that might usually be filled with tired unnecessary bad language or similar, every word seems to be there for a reason. We need to read it all to know these two girls, and to question whether we do. The character of Cassie, who really is trying to find her place and identity, after years of thinking one huge thing about herself, to have that idea shattered, is so heartbreaking to me; I have finished this book with a resounding feeling of how often this happens to many people in different ways. I’m also saddened by the changes in the friendship of the two and can relate that to my own experience, but the interesting thing about ‘Burning Girl’ is how the different ‘parts’ of the book show how the friendship evolves, and how Julia comes to terms with it. It really digs deep into how a childhood friendship can change, yet how you always know the essence of that person. I said the book was a slow burn but I read it within 24 hours and enjoyed it thoroughly. Fantastic, beautiful writing.

[boundtogetherforgood · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Teenage angst is the central theme of this. There s great potential for a story in here somewhere.

[shazjhb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent book. Not sure if she hit the absolute right note with the adolescents but maybe in the 2000 this is adolescence.

[triscuit_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Strong writing shines in this story of the intensity of childhood friendship, growing up and apart. Gripping in its unknowable and somehow ominous depiction of childhood. Ending somehow flat, even though realistic.

[froxgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Expectations of a good ending, I've found, is the usual source of my disappointment with novels. A good/great closing makes the reader want to go back and start again, or to hold the book close, sigh, and wish it was longer. Not so with this one. The first half, which explores a very intimate friendship between two girls since the age of 4, holds the attention and propels the reader forward. The language, Messud's strength, is lovely.But when Julia and Cassie hit middle school, it all falls apart, and the story loses its way, and stumbles to a climactic event that's anti-climactic. Sad. Quotes: "I always liked to imagine an audience. When I wrote in my diary, I couldn't imagine that the only person who would read it was me.""Sometimes I felt that growing up and being a girl was about learning to be afraid. Not paranoid, exactly, but always alert and aware. You came to know, in a way you hadn't as a kid, that the body you inhabited was vulnerable, imperfectly fortified. You start to grow up and you learn from all the stories around you what the world is like, and you start to lose freedom. Beware darkness, isolation, the outdoors, unlocked windows, men you don't know. And then you realize too that even men you know, or thought you knew, might not be okay."

[kcshankd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A girl's coming of age story, but universal in its recollection of the gray area between adolescent and adult. The book does this very well, but just as most early life 'struggles' end up as tempests in a teapot the novel suffers because not much really happens outside of the angst.

[rglossne · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school in their small Massachusetts town. Their family lives are very different, and as they enter adolescence, they grow apart. Cassie’s journey to find her biological father and answers about her background put her life in danger, and test the bonds of friendship. A powerful coming of age story.

[bostonbibliophile · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

OK coming of age story about a girl whose best friend has a lot of problems and self-destructs. I can see it doing really well as a literary book club pick; certainly lots of character-driven stuff to talk about. It's short and I read it in an afternoon.