The Year of Needy Girls

By Patricia A. Smith

Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Lesbian Fiction!

"Recalls both Hellman's The Children's Hour and Lehane's Mystic River in a story about murder and false accusations."
--Bay Area Reporter

"A tense story about a small town swept up in bigotry and paranoia after the brutal murder of a local boy sends the residents into a frenzied witch hunt...Smith's crisp prose and dedication to realistic moral ambiguity make for a provoking read."
--Publishers Weekly

"Smith's first novel successfully builds tension and a sense of dread among the picture-perfect New England fall."
--Library Journal XPress Reviews

"Smith shows us the power of fiction to fully describe the internal and external forces that set the scene for unfounded accusations...Smith deftly builds tension...Smith shows us both the damage that will be ongoing and the revelations and growth that can arise out of ugly times. This is something to remember for the times ahead."
--Lambda Literary

"Smith conveys the impact of this prejudicial hostility on two young women who are struggling to make their way in an intolerant world with a tender and delicate understanding in this nuanced tale of identity and misperception, connection and alienation."
--Booklist Online

"Well-written. The dynamics between the lesbian couple are quite compelling. Smith takes on several important issues, such as classism, racism, and bigotry."
--The Gay and Lesbian Review

"Throughout the novel, Smith peels back layers from relationships. Weaving throughout the story like twin strands of a braid are secrets and the eventual harm brought about by their revelation--prejudices exposed and lies told by loved ones uncovered. From a landscape peopled with supportive neighbors, coworkers and lovers of all types, Smith erases the certainty underlying characters' beliefs and sets them tumbling into chaos. The Year of Needy Girls is an intelligent and captivating read that will spur readers to question their own truths."
--VA Living Magazine

Included in BookRiot's list of 9 Small Press Books to Read in January 2017!

"This well crafted novel stands out for a number of reasons--the nuanced descriptions of the characters' complex feelings, the realistic portrayal of how quickly a person's life and a community can fall into crisis, and the focus on two lesbians and the challenges they face."
--World Wide Work

"A recommended novel that explores small town bigotry."
--She Treads Softly

"A tale of persecution where it shouldn't have happened...There are many people you can't trust. And it's hard to tell."
--Journey of a Bookseller

A young boy's murder unleashes chaos in the life of a schoolteacher and a small New England town.

Bradley, Massachusetts is in many ways a typical small New England town, but a river divides it in half--on one side, the East End: crowded triple-deckers, the Most Precious Blood parish, and a Brazilian immigrant community; and on the other, the West End: renovated Victorians, Brandywine Academy, and families with last names as venerable as the Mayflower.

Deirdre Murphy and her partner Sara Jane (SJ) Edmonds have just moved to their first house--and for the first time are open in their relationship--in the West End, where Deirdre teaches at Brandywine Academy. A dedicated teacher from a working-class background, she is well loved by her students. But the murder of ten-year-old Leo Rivera from the East End changes everything--for Deirdre and SJ, for the girls at Brandywine, and for all of Bradley. And when Deirdre is falsely accused of sexually molesting one of her students, the entire town erupts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kaylie Jones Books
• Release date: Jan 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781617755194

Reviews for The Year of Needy Girls

[devlindusty · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very interesting book. I enjoyed the fast paced thrilling story!

[blueviolent · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thought this book was so timely. I know some people think that homophobia died in America when SCOTUS made the marriage equality decision, but there are countless non-fiction accounts of this type of thing still happening everywhere. I think the story is important and poignant. The writing ebbs a bit here and there, but the overall story bears it out for me. I wish the people who need to read this the most *would* read it.

[chutzpanit · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was definitely a book that held my interest. I was engrossed in the story and thought it was a twist on a situation we've heard about--teacher and student involvement. There was also a lot of overlay with the murder in the background and the fact that neither protagonist was really sure what they wanted in life. Overall, a good book and I would recommend reading it.

[misscassiereads86 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I received an advanced reader copy through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers Group in exchange for my honest review.When reading the synopsis of the book, I was expecting a bit more. I would chalk up my disinterest to the fact that I mostly read fantasy however, I have had contemporary romances sneak up on me. By the time I was halfway through the book I found I was still disinterested in the characters. This is also a shorter read for me, so I feel they could have spent a bit more time creating a fuller story. I feel for a thriller this was a slow read. I feel like this book had so much potential and truly missed the mark. There were so many possibilities to explore with such a diverse setting between upper-class and lower-class, race, and the LGBT relationship it included. As this wasn't the worst book I have read i will still give it two stars.

[mtbearded1_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mystery upon mystery upon mystery. Who killed Leo Rivera? Do the police have the right suspect? Will S.J. and Deidre stay together? Will Deidre's position at Brandywine be threatened? Is it possible to be openly gay/lesbian in a working class community? The Year of Needy Girls poses all these questions and takes a good while to answer them. Still, an enjoyable read, if at times fraught as the reader follows S.J. and Deidre as community events pull them in different directions.

[brandiec-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Year of Needy Girls wasn't quite what I expected. From the publisher's description, I was anticipating a mystery/thriller centered on the murder of 10-year-0ld Leo Rivera and the accusations of molestation against teacher Deirdre Murphy. Instead, these events are fairly tangential to the book's true subject matter: the lesbian relationship between Deirdre and her partner Sara Jane (S.J.) Edmonds. This mismatch between expectation and reality caused me to appreciate The Year of Needy Girls less than might have otherwise been the case; the narrative was slower-paced, and I became impatient because I kept wanting to get to the action.The gist of the plot goes something like this. Leo is sexually molested before his murder; therefore, in the town's eyes, the murderer must be gay. Deirdre is a lesbian who is caught apparently kissing one of her students; this serves to confirm that homosexuals sexually prey upon children. As the mother of the allegedly molested teenager tells her daughter, "'Homosexuals are known predators. ... They have to convert children. I know it sounds silly, but that's what they do.'" (No, Mrs. Worthington, this doesn't sound silly; it sounds ridiculously ignorant for a wealthy resident of liberal Massachusetts in 2016.) Therefore, not only must Deirdre be fired, but the town seriously considers a referendum prohibiting homosexuals from working in (and attending?) schools: "'Homosexuals are not safe for our children,'" says Leo's father.I don't doubt that the LGBTQ community suffers from bias. I don't doubt that, at least in some communities, lesbian partners face pressures on their relationships which would be foreign to most heterosexual couples (although, as The Year of Needy Girls makes clear, no relationship, regardless of sexual orientation, is immune from jealousy or work demands). What beggars belief is that anyone in this day and age, particularly in the Northeast, would openly espouse the level of homophobia Patricia Smith attributes to Mrs. Worthington, Mr. Rivera, and the other residents of Bradley, Massachusetts.When Smith focuses on Deirdre and S.J. as a couple, The Year of Needy Girls rings true. The framing narrative she has chosen, however, leaves much to be desired.This review was based on a free ARC provided by the publisher.

[jasonpettus · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)I'm usually a big fan of Brooklyn-based Akashic Books, and have enjoyed nearly every novel they've sent us over the last half-decade of our relationship with them; and that's what made it a much bigger surprise than normal to read their latest, The Year of Needy Girls by New England author Patricia A. Smith (not to be confused with New England slam poet Patricia Smith), and realize that it's only a mediocre book at best, 300 pages of wasted potential from a premise that really held promise. That premise revolves around a child molestation charge between a high-school teacher and one of her students; but the twist here is that the teacher is a lesbian and the student in question is a teenage girl, which combined with the provocative title could've given us a rich milieu to examine the slippery line between female friendship and female sexuality, especially among impressionable and emotionally charged young women who are in the middle of imperfectly defining that line for themselves. The problem, though, is that Smith never delivers on this promise, turning in a book that will be disappointing to any fan of quickly-plotted crime thrillers -- the few developments that actually happen in the case are entirely expected and take the entire length of the book to take place, when the typical crime novelist would be through them all by the end of act one -- yet it's unsatisfying as a deep character study as well, the other direction one might go with a story like this, precisely because the characters aren't interesting or complicated enough to hold up an entire full-length novel by themselves; our put-upon hero Deirdre is kind of wishy-washy, displays no dark pockets of her personality, and is monomaniacal about her career (plus, although not technically guilty of the molestation charges brought against her, is definitely guilty of deliberately putting herself in that kind of compromising position in the first place, in the spirit of "teachers who inappropriately get wrapped up in the personal lives of their students too much," making it difficult to root for her when she could've so easily avoided the situation in the first place), while her lesbian partner is so non-defined as a character that the author has to make up a distracting sensationalist B-story just to give her something to do. (To be specific, a child murder that happens an entire year before our story begins, which has nothing to do with the main story and affects it not even in the slightest way, despite it being touted as a major plot development in the book's dust-jacket synopsis.)Now add the fact that most of the tension in this book cheaply relies on the citizens of this upper-class liberal New England town reacting with the histrionics of a 1950s moral-panic film to the mere idea of a lesbian being a high-school teacher, an idea that Smith maybe could've gotten away with if setting this story in the actual 1950s, but that rings false and hollow here when set in the 2010s, a lazy excuse to add conflict and stakes to a story that hasn't earned it on its own; and you're left with a novel that will be satisfying neither to crime fans nor those looking for a good LGBT story. It's still getting a decent score from me today, because it's at least well-written; but it's not a book I recommend going out of your way to read, which is sadly the first time in my entire history of reviewing Akashic books that I've had to say that.Out of 10: 7.0

[lesindy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is set in MA, and a lesbian couple runs into problems in their nice town. LS and Deirdre live in a tight-knit upperclass town, and Deirdre teaches French at a private all-girls school. LS is a librarian. There is a missing boy from the 'bad' part of town, and everyone is uneasy. Deirdre's favorite student gets caught kissing her, and LS finds out the man she was trying to teach to read was arrested; the police think he is involved in the kidnapping of the boy. This book had a nice premise, but it is so boring. The details of the boy's kidnapping and murder are rushed through, and the main focus is on LS and Deirdre. It felt like a soap opera book, which I don't like.

[samantha100_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The river is not the only thing that divides the town of Bradley, Massachusetts. The East End is home to the working class and the elite live in the West End. In Patricia A. Smith's novel, The Year of Needy Girls, neither side is immune from trouble. An East End child is molested and murdered. A West End lesbian teacher in an all girl school is accused of a molesting one of her students. Shock, unease and fear are the results. Beliefs are challenged and relationships are threatened. The author has crafted a moving and meaningful story which leaves the reader with much to think about.I received a free ARC through LibraryThing Early Reviewers and the opinions expressed in this review are my own

[diana.hauser · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

THE YEAR OF NEEDY GIRLS by Patricia A. Smith was sent to me by Akashic Books in exchange for an unbiased and honest review.I am interested in Akashic Books - a small, independent, high-quality publisher from Brooklyn, New York. I am very impressed with their offerings.THE YEAR OF NEEDY GIRLS is no exception. The story of a young boy’s abduction and murder in the New England town of Bradley, Massachusetts is a powerful one and is a major plot point. But the book is ‘less’ about the incident and ‘more’ about its repercussions. Fear and suspicion in the small town take their toll, especially on Sara Jane (SJ) Edmonds (local librarian) and Deirdre Murphy (French teacher at ‘posh’ Brandywine Academy). SJ and Deirdre are a lesbian couple and their relationships with their library patrons and young students are highly suspect.As a former teacher and librarian, I was quite interested in these characters - their personalities, their professionalism (or lack thereof), their backgrounds, and their relationships. I was impressed that the dilemmas Ms. Smith’s characters were immersed in reflect so many current (and age-old) pitfalls of both professions. (Spot-On)SJ doesn’t want to reveal a patron’s library activities to the police. She wants to ‘help’ and ‘save’ a suspected murderer. Deirdre wants to ‘help’ and ‘save’ her students by being overly friendly, affectionate and supportive.SJ and Deirdre are the primary ‘needy girls’ in the story. They both seek and need love, admiration, and popularity. Their neediness trumps everything - their relationship, their family ties, their friends and co-workers, their jobs, their professionalism.They work very hard at their own self-destruction and it is both appalling and fascinating to watch their downward death spiral.SJ and Deirdre are educated; they have good jobs (that they appear to like and do well at); they buy a house together. They have all the trappings of adulthood. They feel that they are adults. But they do not accept the responsibilities and restrictions of adulthood. Their immaturity leads to their self-destruction.On p. 312 Deirdre thinks - “It was tricky, this business of being needed.” Amen to that!Ms. Smith’s writing is assertive. She knows what she wants to say and how she wants to say it. Her words are very descriptive.The plot is very layered and well-structured. It is a psychological thriller - not in a criminal sense - but in an emotional one. A great book. Highly recommended.