All Girls

November 1, 2020

DEBUT Set in the privileged world of a 200-year-old Connecticut girls' boarding school, Layden's debut tells the story of teens' coming of age in the era of #MeToo. A rape accusation from 1995 has put Atwater in the news, but not in a good way for an institution that relies on its reputation. The novel is told from numerous girls' viewpoints, a technique that can be confusing but also demonstrates how some of the girls are less privileged and how underneath their outwardly perfect lives lie secrets and tragedy. Like all teenagers, the girls are learning about their own burgeoning sexuality while dealing with the failings and hypocrisy of the adults around them. The adult perspective comes through only via a few formal emails. As the book progresses, readers learn more about the possible rape and rapist, but it is never entirely clear what happened. What becomes obvious, however, is that the school, and society, have long preferred to protect its own reputations and comfortable beliefs rather than the vulnerable. VERDICT An important take on sexuality and #MeToo from the perspective of the young, including many references to pop culture and social media.--Jan Marry, Heritage P.L., New Kent & Charles City, VA

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November 9, 2020
Layden’s incisive debut offers a composite portrait of an exclusive girls’ boarding school on the cusp of a long-overdue reckoning with a sexual abuser on the faculty. The novel opens as an incoming first-year student arrives at the Atwater School in fall 2015, and her parents are troubled upon observing a series of signs reading “A Rapist Works Here” posted along the route to the campus. Subsequent chapters are structured around the defining traditions of an Atwater year, from initiation and fall fest to prom and commencement, and each one introduces at least two or three different students. The identity of the teacher who preyed on a student nearly 20 years earlier, prompting the poster campaign and other acts of protest, is eventually revealed, along with the identity of the current student bent on unmasking him. While the short narratives don’t really give the reader sufficient time to get to know the characters, they coalesce into an overview of the school’s culture, as the students begin to question the official word on the allegations. Notably, the novel is set just before #MeToo, creating an astute snapshot of a venerable institution being pulled, however unwillingly, into its future. Layden succeeds at bringing the effects of an institutional cover-up into sharp relief. Agent: Lisa Grubka, Fletcher & Company

January 1, 2021
Layden's debut, set in the fictional all-girls Atwater boarding school, is filled with longstanding traditions, social complexities, shifting alliances, and shocking secrets. The story of an academic year is told through the eyes of nine different students, month by month. From a freshman legacy student whose grandmother and mother both attended to a talented senior who is the school's poster girl, each young woman reveals her motivations and concerns as she attends classes, participates in events, and lives her life. A 20-year-old scandal resurfaces as students arrive to begin the year, and the school's handling of the situation at the time has lasting effects for the institution itself and for the students readers will grow to care about. Readers will find themselves thinking about the vividly and compassionately rendered characters long after their chapters end, and considering decisions they would make in the same situations. Give it to grown-up fans of Gossip Girl and readers of Curtis Sittenfeld and Emma Straub.

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March 1, 2021
The students at an elite all-girls boarding school in Connecticut deal with the exposure of a sexual abuser on campus. Each chapter is told from a different perspective, presenting a broad range of empathetic and undaunted portraits of Atwater students. The novel begins on the first day of school in the fall of 2015--notably prior to the #MeToo movement--with a sinister description of the northwest Connecticut setting: "This is where teenagers wrap themselves around telephone poles." Someone has placed signs along the country roads leading to the pristine and cloistered school saying "A Rapist Works Here." Parents are alarmed, students are curious, the administration falters. Questions of young women's sexual agency, of power and abuse, are explored from a variety of student perspectives. Each chapter centers on a different girl, taking the reader through various grade levels, clubs, traditions, and friend groups on campus. As the year unfolds, the identity of the abuser is revealed, and it becomes clear that the school has been turning a purposeful blind eye to the scandal for decades. The reader could feel lost in the sea of characters, but chapter titles like "Orientation," "Prom," and "Commencement" offer clear signposts to the passage of time, helping the book feel like a novel rather than a short story collection. Diving into the unprocessed underworld of adolescence, Layden creates space for a conversation--albeit cloistered--about feminism and the unsung difficulties of surviving in a male-dominated world. Intelligent, evocative, and empathetic.

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