In 1997, at the distinguished Siddons School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the school year opens with distressing news: Astra Dell is suffering from a rare disease. Astra’s friends try to reconcile the girl’s suffering with their own fierce longings and impetuous attachments. Car writes unsparing letters, which the dirty Marlene, in her devotion, then steals. Other classmates carry on: the silly team of Suki and Alex pursue Will Bliss while the subversive Lisa Van de Ven makes dates with MissWilkes. The world of private schools and privilege in New York City is funny, poignant, and cruel, and at its heart is the stricken Astra Dell, "that pale girl from the senior class, the dancer with all the hair, the red hair, knotted or braided or let to fall to her waist, a fever and she consumed."
National Book Award finalist Christine Schutt has created a wickedly original tale of innocence, daring, and illness.
Industry Reviews
"Schutt''s impressionistic style, with its extraordinary gift for exquisite economy, carries the day and creates a mood and tone that are hauntingly unforgettable." (Starred) "[B]eautifully written... there isn''t a boring sentence in here." "A very literary look at a private girls'' school on the Upper East Side." "[P]roves the puffy prep-school genre can shoulder real emotional weight -- and that indeed, it sometimes should." "Readers who love language and appreciate description will find All Souls worth reading.... Anyone who wants to read a high school story that''s about more than just life as a model/fashionista/mean girl will enjoy this book." "In her latest novel, Christine Schutt once again proves herself an astute observer of human nature...Schutt seamlessly marries these girls to the unpredictable, indifferent threat of random fate, a clear, precise vision of privilege marred by tragedy." "One of the best private school novels to appear in recent years...With commendations from John Ashbery, and sentences that often demand rereading, Christine Schutt has mainly appealed to reader who don''t begrudge a prose its small risks. In ''All Souls'', her second novel, she makes a bid for wider appeal. Describing the small cosmos around an elite Upper East Side girls'' school, Ms. Schutt imagines -- or penetrates -- an exclusive world at once sexy and lamentable, predictable but still mysterious. Her subject is not any one aspect of private school culture, but its almost intangible totality, the thing that gives a school, in all its decentered complexity, an identity. Miraculousl, she achieves this, and in a novel that is a model of succintness." Set in a girls' school on Manhattan's Upper East Side, this book is a wonderfully written, touching story...an extraordinarily captivating take on the teachers', parents', and teens' troubled worlds...refreshing for this genre. "Refreshingly strange.Schutt''s work... is fiercely intimate, laying bare the jagged lives of girls and women.... Schutt''s roving, kaleidoscopic vision-- often wickedly funny-- captures the quivering of all these souls in the heat of mortality.... It''s the foreign land of teenage girldom--where bodies relentlessly blossom and friendships resemble toruous love affairs-- that Schutt gets especially, achingly right.... ''All Souls'' is shot through with [Virginia] Woolf''s lyrical, restless spirit... The result is a bold, sharp story about teenage girls, class and illness, about those moments when we achieve the miracle of human connection -- and those when we don''t." PRAISE FOR FLORIDA "Haunting and original, Florida is a beautiful book."--Claire Messud, author of The Emperor's Children
"In Florida, Christine Schutt conveys, through an odd, beautiful, and original language, real truths about childhood and longing. She is a truly gifted writer."--George Saunders, author of Pastoralia PRAISE FOR FLORIDA
"Haunting and original, Florida is a beautiful book." Claire Messud, author of The Emperor's Children
"In Florida, Christine Schutt conveys, through an odd, beautiful, and original language, real truths about childhood and longing. She is a truly gifted writer." George Saunders, author of Pastoralia" PRAISE FOR "FLORIDA"
"Haunting and original, "Florida" is a beautiful book." Claire Messud, author of "The Emperor's Children
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"In "Florida, " Christine Schutt conveys, through an odd, beautiful, and original language, real truths about childhood and longing. She is a truly gifted writer." George Saunders, author of "Pastoralia"" Praise for ALL SOULS "[M]asterfully paced... Schutt's writing is sharp as ever, with a keen eye for life's everyday grotesqueries.... Schutt continues to capture the messiness and confusions particular to adolescence, but in "All Souls, " new terrain refreshes this writer's astringent voice."--TimeOut New York (four stars)
"Readers who love language and appreciate description will find "All Souls" worth reading.... Anyone who wants to read a high school story that's about more than just life as a model/fashionista/mean girl will enjoy this book."" -- ElleGirl.com
" Praise for ALL SOULS "[M]asterfully paced... Schutt's writing is sharp as ever, with a keen eye for life's everyday grotesqueries.... Schutt continues to capture the messiness and confusions particular to adolescence, but in "All Souls," new terrain refreshes this writer's astringent voice."--TimeOut New York (four stars) "Readers who love language and appreciate description will find "All Souls" worth reading.... Anyone who wants to read a high school story that's about more than just life as a model/fashionista/mean girl will enjoy this book."" -- ElleGirl.com
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