Girls
Authors: Frederick Busch
“POWERFUL … EXHILARATING …
Here is a writer of intelligence and tenderness, a rare combination in a cynical, doubting world.”
—
The New York Times Book Review
“When a book is this successful, it’s impossible to detect any signs of artistic struggle. The narrative seems to unfold with a miraculous and thrilling ease. Jack is such an absorbing and sympathetic narrator, in fact, that it’s easy to overlook the real-life multifacetedness of the novel’s other characters, both major and minor. Its pitch-perfect dialogue, skillfully contrived plot, and authentically wintry atmosphere are all exceptional, but a great deal of its strength comes from the moral complexity of its characters.”
—
The Washington Post Book World
“Lyric … Memorable … Frederick Busch is such a fine writer. In his new novel
Girls
, he marries love and sorrow, memory and guilt in a story that will break your heart.”
—
Orlando Sentinel
“Busch is a master and those who don’t know his name should.”
—
The Baltimore Sun
“Powerful … Though the crime story is intriguing, it is Jack’s growing insight about his marriage, his town, and himself that transforms this page-turner about lost children into a tender and eloquent examination of the even greater mystery that is the human heart.”
—
Glamour
“
Girls
is about as close to perfect as a novel gets. Its prose is clean and strong but never advertises its own quiet brilliance, its characters are sharply defined and irresistible, and its plot is suspenseful enough to keep you up until dawn.… Jack is a superb creation: troubled, desperate, angry, capable of violence, even more capable of kindness. Fanny is equally compelling, a quintessentially tough/tender American woman.…
Girls
is an achievement, powerful and true.”
—
Men’s Journal
“A TOUR-DE-FORCE …
This is the finest literary thriller since William Trevor’s
Felicia’s Journey
.… It is a dark tale, but it’s told with an economical mastery and intensity that only a few current novelists can command.”
—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
“The novel’s social realism gives it the page-turning pace of a mystery. But Busch’s masterly pairing of dark wit and tender mercy is what makes
Girls
a great work.”
—
US Magazine
“Combining the quick pace of a detective story with the bold poetics of a literary work, Frederick Busch’s taut new novel,
Girls
, is a dark, compulsively readable drama.”
—
Elle
“Some writers get by on artifice. Other writers depend on something deeper and more difficult; when they core the apple of human behavior, they throw away the apple and keep the core. Frederick Busch is one such writer. Busch has proven himself an able and sometimes spectacular chronicler of the serious business of life. Short on gimmick and long on emotional truth … this novel finds him working at the top of his form.… A chilling story about the impossibility of preserving the innocence of childhood and the discomfort of embracing the guilt of adulthood.”
—
Time Out
“A complex and disturbing vision of the world as a place filled with danger powers this fascinating novel, another blistering drama of family relations from one of our most productive and passionately serious writers.… It all works superbly as a conventional thriller, though the story’s most effective as a harrowing expression of the fragility of our defenses against loss and death, and a moving characterization of its memorable protagonist, a decent man who struggles against powerful odds to remain one. An impressive demonstration of Busch’s continuing mastery of realistic narrative.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)
“Engrossing … Busch has a wonderful ear for dialogue and a remarkable talent for creating nuanced characters whose behavior rings painfully true.”
BOOKS BY FREDERICK BUSCH
Fiction
North
(2005)
A Memory of War
(2003)
Don’t Tell Anyone
(2000)
The Night Inspector
(1999)
Girls
(1997)
The Children in the Woods
(1994)
Long Way from Home
(1993)
Closing Arguments
(1991)
Harry and Catherine
(1990)
War Babies
(1989)
Absent Friends
(1989)
Sometimes I Live in the Country
(1986)
Too Late American Boyhood Blues
(1984)
Invisible Mending
(1984)
Take This Man
(1981)
Rounds
(1979)
Hardwater Country
(1979)
The Mutual Friend
(1978)
Domestic Particulars
(1976)
Manual Labor
(1974)
Breathing Trouble
(1973)
I Wanted a Year Without Fall
(1971)
Nonfiction
Letters to a Fiction Writer
(2000)
A Dangerous Profession
(1999)
When People Publish
(1986)
Hawkes
(1973)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2006 Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 1997 by Frederick Busch
Reading group guide copyright © 1998 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. R
EADER’S
C
IRCLE
and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Harmony Books, an imprint of Crown Publishers, Inc, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1997. Subsequently published with a reading group guide by Fawcett Books, an imprint of the Random House Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1998.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. for permission to adapt “Ralph the Duck” (
chapter 2
, “Ralph”) from
Absent Friends
. Copyright © 1989 by Frederick Busch. Adapted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-97063
eISBN: 978-0-307-79812-1
v3.1
JUDY
I intend to portray none of the too many families who search for their children. While writing this book, I wished that I were working on their behalf. But this is, of course, a novel, and it can speak at last only about these characters, all of whom I have invented
.
W
E STARTED CLEARING
the field with shovels and buckets and of course our cupped, gloved hands. The idea was to not break any frozen parts of her away. Then, when we had a broad hole in the top of the snow that covered the field and we were a foot or two of snow above where she might have been set down to wait for spring, we started using poles. Some of us used rake handles and the long hafts of shovels. One used a five-foot iron pry bar. He was a big man, and the bar weighed twenty-five pounds, anyway, but he used it gently, I remember, like a doctor with his hands in someone’s wound. We came together to try to find her and we did what we needed to, and then we seemed to separate as quickly as we could.