Jessica Woodbury's Reviews > Marlena

I don't have a good excuse for waiting so long to read MARLENA. I mean, I have an excuse but it's not good. I tend to run hot and cold on books with intense female friendships, largely because I've never actually *had* that kind of relationship. And while women's stories are still not as common as they should be in literary fiction, there are certainly a lot of them about the female friendship, particularly the teenage version. But with all that said, even a plot or concept I'm tired of can be magical and new in the right hands and this book is one of those times.

Marlena isn't just about a complex friendship, there's also a real sense of place in Silver Lake, Michigan. There's issues of class, poverty, and addiction that feel organic and vital instead of tacked on. There's a real sense of reflection in the narration, of a woman looking not just at this formative period of her life, but at her life as it is. And there's that nostalgia around teenage life that felt deeply to me even though Cat and I don't have much in common, writing teenagers well as an adult is hard, and understanding how adults reexamine their teenage selves simultaneously is am impressive line to walk.

It took me a little while to get into this book, at first the rhythm didn't quite grab me and I was feeling like maybe this was a story I already knew that wouldn't feel fresh. I'm glad I stuck around.