Buntin, Julie: Marlena

Tell me what you can’t forget, and I’ll tell you who you are . . .

Everything about fifteen-year-old Cat’s new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter, until she meets her neighbour, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat, inexperienced and desperate for connection, is quickly lured into Marlena’s orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blonde hair. As the two girls turn the untamed landscape of their desolate small town into a kind of playground, Cat catalogues a litany of firsts – first drink, first cigarette, first kiss – while Marlena’s habits harden and calcify. Within the year, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby.

Now, decades later, when a ghost from that pivotal year surfaces unexpectedly, Cat must try to forgive herself and move on, even as the memory of Marlena keeps her tangled in the past.

Alive with an urgent, unshakable tenderness, Marlena is an electrifying story about love, addiction and loss. It’s about the people who shape us beyond reason and how we pull ourselves back from the brink.

Verlag: Pan macmillan Ltd. Erscheinungsjahr: 2017 Ausführung: Kartonierter Einband (Kt)