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Pretty Little Dirty: A Novel by Amanda Boyden

Vintage Books, 2006 $13.95

Pretty Little Dirty, the debut novel by Amanda Boyden, is a coming-of-age story that feels both immediately familiar and devastatingly foreign, a combination that produces an absorbing emotional torrent of a novel, whose fast-paced plot crescendos into horror. The story takes place in Kansas City, Missouri—a place not so different from Buffalo. The city consists of a few busy shopping strips, one vast and cool art gallery, a few local universities and a multitude of suburban neighborhoods, whose hometown homogeneity belies the inequable economic distribution of wealth between them.

The novel is narrated by Lisa, a girl whose story is inextricably intertwined with that of her best friend, Celeste. Lisa defines her life by the moments spent with Celeste, and her movements—through childhood, adolescence and the final hurtling advance into adulthood—are marked and mirrored by Celeste, her friend, love and partner-in-crime. “I doubt my coming of age,” Boyden writes in Lisa’s clear, strong voice, “was very different from most any other woman’s, and mine likely doesn’t make for much of a story. Fortunately, the bigger story is Celeste’s…” Lisa is half right: The bigger story is Celeste’s, but not because it’s more interesting. The story is Celeste’s because Lisa is imbued with her spirit. Celeste is one of those rare, beautiful characters who capture your imagination, your heart and your desire. With a deft swiftness, Boyden engages her readers just as Celeste has captured Lisa’s imagination. Boyden’s tight prose shines as Lisa describes their angst, their shared sexual escapades and the gradual, exquisitely detailed fall from grace the best friends experience as the book moves toward its ruinous conclusion.

Pretty Little Dirty is a rare find: familiar and revealing, engrossing and disturbing—an early indicator of great things to come from an inspired first-time novelist.