Dylan Landis

At the center of this startling fiction debut is Leah Levinson, a teen at sea in the anonymous ordeals of a middle-class upbringing on the Upper West Side in the 1970s. In ten installments, written from varying perspectives, we witness her uneasy relationships with faster, looser peers -- girls she is drawn to but also alienated by. No one, though, alienates Leah more than her mother, Helen. Estranged yet intertwined, they struggle within the confines...