With the haunting, romantic voyeurism of The Virgin Suicides and the atmosphere and emotional intensity of Where the Crawdads Sing, an intoxicating Southern Gothic debut novel about identical triplets whose lives are devastated when their burgeoning desires turn deadly.
“There never was a gator killing around here, contrary to everlasting rumor, and there was only one real murder, but it seems each bad thing that happens is like an incantation invoking the Binderup family, its women and their dying.”
Identical triplets Baby A, Baby B, and Baby C Binderup were welcomed into the world as their mother was ushered out of it, leaving them nameless and in the care of their Gram, Isadora. Nineteen years later, the triplets work at their Gram’s crumbling golf course in Longshadow, Texas, where the ever-watchful eyes of the town observe them serving up glasses of ice-cold lemonade to golfers, swimming in the murky waters of the neighboring bayou, or slipping t-shirts off their sunburnt shoulders in hopes of attracting the kind of attention they are only beginning to understand.
Cautious Baby B watches as lustful Baby A and introverted Baby C find matches among the town boys. Even Baby B has noticed that the town’s golden boy seems to be intrigued by her, only her. Just as each girl’s desire to be seen for herself is becoming fulfilled, a seemingly trivial kiss is bestowed on the wrong sister, leading to a moment of unspeakable violence that will upend the triplets’ world forever.
Pulsating with menace and narrated with hypnotic lyricism, Girls with Long Shadows is an electrifying literary thriller that captures how female teenage angst can turn lethal when insecurities are weaponized and sibling bonds are severed. Tense, lush, and painfully beautiful, it forces us to consider the lengths to which we will go to claim our own personhood.
