Frederick Busch is the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and a fiction award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His last book, The Children in the Woods, was a finalist for the 1995 Pen/Faulkner Award. He has been acting director of the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa and is currently the Edgar Fairchild Professor of Literature at Colgate University.
Excerpts from reviews of Frederick Busch's Girls:
"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."
--Men's Journal
"Combining the quick pace of a detective story with the bold
poetics of literary work, Frederick Busch's taut new novel, Girls,
is a dark, compulsively readable drama.... From the makings of an
all-too-common evening-news item, Busch has fashioned a novel of
considerable weight and dimension. By imbuing the lurid with the
introspective, he has given a stock story intelligence, humanity,
and terrific range."
--Elle
"When a book is this successful it's impossible to detect any sign
of artistic struggle.... Jack is such an absorbing and sympathetic
narrator.... nothing [Busch] has published in the past has quite
prepared me for the seductive beauty of this very disturbing
book.... 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 highest compliment a reader can pay a literary
thriller--or any novel, for that matter--is to claim that the book
is nearly as intricate and mysterious as life itself, that the
reader has lived in the book as if it were a particularly lifelike
dream, and cared about its characters as if they were real. All
these claims are true about Girls".
--The Washington Post Book World
"It is a dark tale, but it's told with an economical mastery and
intensity that only a few current novelists can command. Busch even
manages to create a dog who is real, touching but never cute, and
the perfect life-enhancing foil for the human sorrows around
him."
--Publishers Weekly
"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
"This well-written and engrossing novel is part mystery and part
exploration of how grief can manhandle a marriage."
--Booklist
"Girls is about pain and what happens when pain can't find its way
out of the human vessel....Girls is unusually entertaining.... In
the end, this is a chilling story about the guilt of
adulthood."
--Time Out
"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
"Fierce, wise, gripping and true, Girls marks the continuing
evolution of a first-rate American storyteller.... the triumph of
Girls is in its clear-eyed compassion for all those who try to flee
from the bedrock realities of their lives."
--The New York Times Book Review
"A complex and disturbing vision of the world as a place filled
with danger powers this fascinating novel.... 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."
--Kirkus Reviews
YA‘Jack is a Vietnam veteran trying to lose‘or find‘himself as a campus cop in a small college in western New York state. His struggles in dealing with the young people he is paid to protect are overshadowed by his own problems. Jack's marriage is failing because neither he nor his wife can deal with their grief and guilt over the death of their baby daughter. Jack's rage and sorrow, pain and anguish fill the pages of this book. When an adolescent girl is murdered in a nearby town, he feels he must find out who did it. As he searches for the killer and tries to do his job, Jack reveals more and more about himself. Busch's portrayals of characters in a small college town knit together by long, snowy winters form a narrative as clear and brittle as the sky on a wintry day. YAs will appreciate the challenges Jack faces in dealing with drugs, sexual abuse, broken-down cars, and icy roads on a campus full of young people eager to try out their independence. Jack is less successful in his fumbling efforts to deal with his own problems, but his attempts to solve the murder lead him to a new understanding of himself.‘Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA
Excerpts from reviews of Frederick Busch's Girls:
"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."
--Men's Journal
"Combining the quick pace of a detective story with the bold
poetics of literary work, Frederick Busch's taut new novel,
Girls, is a dark, compulsively readable drama.... From the
makings of an all-too-common evening-news item, Busch has fashioned
a novel of considerable weight and dimension. By imbuing the lurid
with the introspective, he has given a stock story intelligence,
humanity, and terrific range."
--Elle
"When a book is this successful it's impossible to detect any sign
of artistic struggle.... Jack is such an absorbing and sympathetic
narrator.... nothing [Busch] has published in the past has quite
prepared me for the seductive beauty of this very disturbing
book.... 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 highest compliment a reader can pay a literary
thriller--or any novel, for that matter--is to claim that the book
is nearly as intricate and mysterious as life itself, that the
reader has lived in the book as if it were a particularly lifelike
dream, and cared about its characters as if they were real. All
these claims are true about Girls".
--The Washington Post Book World
"It is a dark tale, but it's told with an economical mastery and
intensity that only a few current novelists can command. Busch even
manages to create a dog who is real, touching but never cute, and
the perfect life-enhancing foil for the human sorrows around
him."
--Publishers Weekly
"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
"This well-written and engrossing novel is part mystery and part
exploration of how grief can manhandle a marriage."
--Booklist
"Girls is about pain and what happens when pain can't find
its way out of the human vessel....Girls is unusually
entertaining.... In the end, this is a chilling story about the
guilt of adulthood."
--Time Out
"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
"Fierce, wise, gripping and true, Girls marks the continuing
evolution of a first-rate American storyteller.... the triumph of
Girls is in its clear-eyed compassion for all those who try
to flee from the bedrock realities of their lives."
--The New York Times Book Review
"A complex and disturbing vision of the world as a place filled
with danger powers this fascinating novel.... 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."
--Kirkus Reviews
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