Paulina & Fran

<p><strong>A gorgeous book of nerve endings Rachel B. Glaser's <em>Paulina & Fran</em> manages to capture the rawness and restlessness of youth friendship and artists in the making. She gets to the bone of those quixotic beautiful years when everything matters most things hurt and you have no idea exactly who you are. I've never read anything quite like it. -- Christopher Bollen author of <em>Orient</em></strong></p><p><strong>A story of friendship art sex and curly hair: an audaciously witty debut tracing the <em>pas de deux</em> of lust and love between two young uncertain conflicted art students.</strong> </p><p>At their New England art school Paulina and Fran both stand apart from the crowd. Paulina is striking and sexually adventurous--a self-proclaimed queen bee with a devastating mean-girl streak. With her gorgeous untamed head of curly hair Fran is quirky sweet and sexually innocent. An aspiring painter whose potential outstrips her confidence she floats dreamily through criticisms and dance floors alike. On a school trip to Norway the girls are drawn together each disarmed by the other's charisma.</p><p>Though their bond is instant and powerful it's also wracked by complications. When Fran winds up dating one of Paulina's ex-boyfriends an incensed Paulina becomes determined to destroy the couple creating a rift that will shape their lives well past the halcyon days of art school. </p><p>Crackling with <em>bon mots </em>and knowing snapshots of that moment when the carefree cocoon of adolescence opens into the permanent unknowable future <em>Paulina & Fran</em> is both a sparkling dance party of a novel and the debut novel of a writer with rare insight into the complexities of obsession friendship and prickly ever-elusive love.</p>