Synopsis
At the center of Francine Prose's profoundly moving new novel is a young girl facing the consequences of sudden loss after the death of her sister. As her parents drift toward their own risky consolations, thirteen-year-old Nico is left alone to grope toward understanding and clarity, falling into a seductive, dangerous relationship with her sister's enigmatic boyfriend.
Over one haunted summer, Nico must face that life-changing moment when children realize their parents can no longer help them. She learns about the power of art, of time and place, the mystery of loss and recovery. But for all the darkness at the novel's heart, the narrative itself is radiant with the lightness of summer and charged by the restless sexual tension of teenage life.
Goldengrove takes its place among the great novels of adolescence, beside Henry James's The Awkward Age and L. P. Hartley's The Go-Between.
The Barnes & Noble Review
The title of Francine Prose's novel Goldengrove is taken from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins about a young girl, Margaret, who mourns the end of summer: "Goldengrove's unleaving." The story centers on the aftermath of the drowning death of a 17-year-old, also named Margaret, in present-day Upstate New York, and in particular her family's emotional struggle in its wake. As one might expect, her father, Henry, regrets naming her after a girl in a poem about death. "I used to love that poem. Fleeting youth, mortality, time, age, innocence -- the whole metaphysical enchilada. What did I think life was going to be, some kind of English paper?"