Bibliography: Shaw, Tucker.  (2009).  The Girls. New York: Amulet Books.  ISBN: 9780810983489

Plot Summary:  An homage to Clare Luce Booth’s play The Women featuring instead of wealthy socialites, privileged girls living at an elite Aspen, Colorado boarding school.  There’s good girl Mary, mean girl Sylvia, gossip Amber, cheating Crystal and Peggy, relative newcomer who feels stuck in the middle and doesn’t quite know how to respond to the situations that arise.  Returning from holiday break, Peggy and Sylvia overhear Amber tell someone the Mary’s boyfriend is cheating on her with Crystal.  Peggy is torn, what should she do?  She doesn’t even know if it is true.  Sylvia takes full advantage of the situation by ensuring that Mary finds out before the day is over, although not from Sylivia herself.  The rest of the book traces the fall out from this discovery as well as the day to day happenings of the girls and their lives.

Critical Analysis:  I have to be honest that I have not read the play The Women or seen any of the movie versions, but I imagine that most of the target audience hasn’t either.  Shaw takes a fairly typical teen story and manages to make it quite compelling.  There is this overarching feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Will Mary confront Crystal?  Will she ever talk to Steven again?  Will Sylvia become a new best friend?  Will Peggy be able to make up for not telling what she knew?

The story is written from Peggy’s point of view and made more interesting by her obession/love of food–when she gets stressed or worried, she starts cooking yummy delicious things in her mind, which are listed in the text.  Peggy also works for a chi chi gourmet restaurant as a sous chef of sorts and several scenes of the book are set there.  I am sure the this book will appeal to many teen girls.   (It sounds like a summary of daily events in their lives–if they lived and worked and played in the elite surroundings of Aspen anyway.)  However, several days after reading it, I am left with wishing that there had been a little more to it, a little more development of the characters besides Peggy would have been a good way to show the sort of complex motivation behind each girl’s actions.  Still, it reads quickly and a lot like a play or movie, and I know that the cover alone will sell it to many readers.