Paulina & Fran

A gorgeous book of nerve endings, Rachel B. GlasersPaulina Franmanages to capture the rawness and restlessness of youth, friendship, and artists in the making. She gets to the bone of those quixotic, beautiful years when everything matters, most things hurt, and you have no idea exactly who you are. Ive never read anything quite like it. Christopher Bollen, author ofOrientA story of friendship, art, sex, and curly hair: an audaciously witty debut tracing the pas de deux of lust and love between two young, uncertain, conflicted art students.At their New England art school, Paulina and Fran both stand apart from the crowd. Paulina is striking and sexually adventurousa self-proclaimed queen bee with a devastating mean-girl streak. With her gorgeous untamed head of curly hair, Fran is quirky, sweet, and sexually innocent. An aspiring painter whose potential outstrips her confidence, she floats dreamily through criticisms and dance floors alike. On a school trip to Norway, the girls are drawn together, each disarmed by the others charisma.Though their bond is instant and powerful, its also wracked by complications. When Fran winds up dating one of Paulinas ex-boyfriends, an incensed Paulina becomes determined to destroy the couple, creating a rift that will shape their lives well past the halcyon days of art school.Crackling with bon mots and knowing snapshots of that moment when the carefree cocoon of adolescence opens into the permanent, unknowable future, Paulina Fran is both a sparkling dance party of a novel, and the debut novel of a writer with rare insight into the complexities of obsession, friendship, and prickly, ever-elusive love.