The burning girl: Claire Messud - Tapa dura

Messud is magnificent on female fury . . . The Burning Girl is an astute, subtle novel that conceals an eloquent and clear-eyed rage simmering beneath its surface (Francesca Segal Financial Times)

Messud captures young adolescence vividly and unjudgementally . . . this is a hard book to stop reading (Ursula K Le Guin Guardian)

A novel of deep emotional intelligence . . . There are insightful, psychologically astute meditations throughout the narrative, written in the precise, elegant prose we've come to expect from this master storyteller . . . The Burning Girl is reminiscent of My Brilliant Friend (Lucy Scholes Independent)

Emotionally intense and quietly haunting (Kirkus Reviews)

The Woman Upstairs was a clever, audacious portrayal of an untrustworthy protagonist. Informed by the same sophisticated intelligence and elegant prose, but gaining new poignant depths, this novel is haunting and emotionally gripping (Publishers Weekly)

A novel that packs a massive punch as it delves into the devastating results of a fractured friendship (Woman & Home)

Messud's gift is to understand the nuances of female relationships and believe that they are worthy of sustained and unhurried attention (Evening Standard)

Two best friends from childhood are forced on to different paths in The Burning Girl. But Claire Messud's moving writing makes it so much deeper, and gets us to think about growing up, friendship and how girls are treated by society (Good Housekeeping)

This is a terrific novel, beautifully written and crafted; I don't believe Messud could write a duff sentence if she tried (Kate Saunders The Times)

This fierce, melancholy book lays bare the girls' shared desire to escape their small-town American home for something bigger and brighter, and explores why it went badly awry (Sunday Express)

A bracing and hypnotic portrait of the complexities of female friendship from the New York Times bestselling author of The Woman Upstairs. Julia Robinson and Cassie Burnes have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge: while Julia comes from a stable, happy, middle-class family, Cassie never knew her father, who died when she was an infant, and has an increasingly tempestuous relationship with her single mother, Bev. When Bev becomes involved with the mysterious Anders Shute, Cassie feels cruelly abandoned. Disturbed, angry and desperate for answers, she sets out on a journey that will put her own life in danger, and shatter her oldest friendship. Compact, compelling, and ferociously sad, The Burning Girl is at once a story about childhood, friendship and community, and a complex examination of the stories we tell ourselves about childhood and friendship. Claire Messud brilliantly mixes folklore and Bildungsroman, exploring the ways in which our made-up stories, and their consequences, become real.