Marlena

"At the center of Julie Buntin’s debut novel is the kind of coming-of-age friendship that goes beyond camaraderie, into a deeper bond that forges identity; it’s friendship as a creative act, a collaborative work of imagination . . . This generous, sensitive novel of true feeling . . . sweeps you up without too much explication, becoming both a painful exorcism and a devoted memorial to friends and selves who are gone."—The New York Times Book Review

“Julie Buntin’s debut novel, Marlena . . . joins a glut of recent novels that pair a retrospective female narrator with an extravagantly charismatic but troubled friend . . . But Marlena, unlike the others, seems to be aware of the complicity of these kinds of stories in perpetuating the mystique of girls who go wrong . . . Buntin vividly captur[es] the slow, blurry creep of intoxication. The value of novels like Marlena . . . is how insightfully they capture the complex intensity of girlhood.”—The Atlantic

"Excellent . . . a wild, gorgeous evocation . . . [Buntin’s] lyricism is precise and revelatory, capable of great beauty and, when called for, great ugliness. Marlena is a novel about youth—a time of splendor and squalor. Buntin make us see, hear and feel both."—The San Francisco Chronicle

"Marlena is a gorgeous portrayal of what it’s like to be a teenage girl, and an even more gorgeous exploration of the events that transform the woman a teenage girl grows into."—Newsweek

"Julie Buntin’s standout debut novel, Marlena . . . cannily interweaves two different time frames to capture an electric friendship and its legacy . . . Buntin is attuned to the way in which adolescent friends embolden and betray.”—Vogue

"It's still so early in 2017 that calling something a best debut novel of the year is a dicey thing to try and do. But if the Lorrie Moore blurb on the front cover doesn't tip you off that Julie Buntin's Marlena is a book you should be paying attention to, the fact that the author created something that could easily be called the millennial Midwestern version of the celebrated Elena Ferrante Neapolitan Novels crossed with Robin Wasserman's great Girls on Fire, should do the trick."—Rolling Stone

"Brilliant . . . Marlena so perfectly captures the bottomless need and desire of teenage girls and the reckless abandon with which they lives their lives."—NYLON

"A gorgeous, knowing debut that will make you reflect on the people who continue to shape our lives long after we leave them behind."—Marie Claire

"In this icy and accomplished first novel, the intoxicating friendship between an inexperienced loner and her manic, wild-child neighbor continues to exert an irresistible pull on our narrator decades later."—O, the Oprah Magazine

“Julie Buntin captures that unique moment at the precipice of adulthood with emotional honesty and insight. She writes the kind of piercing, revelatory sentences you have to read to whomever is near, sentences you find yourself remembering years later.”—Jonathan Safran Foer

“The gifted young writer Julie Buntin has written a novel of deep and exquisite intelligence, humor, and riveting sensitivity. A terrific debut.”—Lorrie Moore

"Marlena is absolutely lacerating. The most accurate portrait I’ve read about angst, lust, boredom, and the blindness of youth. It isn’t merely a friendship chronicle, nor is it a profile of a doomed, beautiful girl. It’s the story of a haunting, about the ghosts that never release us and continue to define us. Julie Buntin’s command of her craft is so flawless you forget that it’s fiction. I binge-read Marlena—sick to my stomach, with equal parts fear and nostalgia—stunned that any of us made it out of our adolescence alive."—Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter

"The true magic of Julie Buntin is she writes stories that feel like your own. This gorgeous, assured debut captures the romance of young friendship, cutting deep with the finest touch."—Julia Pierpont, author of Among the Ten Thousand Things

"Marlena slayed me. Gorgeously written, with a sense of place so perfect I didn't even have to close my eyes to pretend I was there, this novel is rich and sensuous and beautifully conceived. Buntin writes about the all-consuming bond between teenage girls with urgency and suspense and despair. I loved every word."—Anton DiSclafani, bestselling author of The After Party and The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

"In Marlena, Julie Buntin revitalizes a classic story making it all her own with sensuous, vibrant prose and a narrator who feels deeply even as she feints certain painful truths about herself. In these pages I not only saw my own story, I came to understand it better. Many readers will too. This is a fierce and gorgeous debut."—Edan Lepucki, bestselling author of California

"Sensitive and smart and arrestingly beautiful, debut novelist Buntin's tale of the friendship between two girls in the woods of Northern Michigan makes coming-of-age stories feel both urgent and new . . . Buntin creates a world so subtle and nuanced and alive that it imprints like a memory. Devastating; as unforgettable as it is gorgeous."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A keenly observed study of teenage character . . . poignant and unforgettable.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[A] vivid debut . . . Buntin’s prose is emotional and immediate, and the interior lives she draws of young women and obsessive best friends are Ferrante-esque.”—Booklist (starred review)

"Riveting, assured debut novel . . . Marlena is propulsive and gripping . . . Buntin excels at capturing the longing and intensity of being a teenager . . . [Buntin] creat[es] characters so nuanced and true-to-life you’d swear you were remembering them yourself."—Bookforum

"It’s rare that a literary novel gives me the feeling that Marlena did . . . compelling, compulsory . . . [An] ice-clean story of two girls, one doomed, one in thrall, and what will happen to drag them both down into traps of their own making."—LitHub