(In the most moving and emotionally stirring fictional debut since Anna Quidlen's One True Thing or Mona Simpson's Anywhere But Here, Karin Cook gives us a novel about girls and their mothers, about sibling rivalry and kinship, about the mysterious tug between love and antagonism that lies at the heart of every family. The year Tilden turns twelve, her mother, Frances, falls in love and moves the family north. Soon the watchful, wise Tilden and her rebellious younger sister, Elizabeth, are navigating a new household amidst the awkward and alluring terrain of adolescence.

But when Frances suddenly discovers a lump in her breast, her daughters must confront the unpredictablility of her illness. With heartbreak and humor, these characters exposes a world of secrets and learn to survive in the face of life's contradictions. Funny, haunting, and unflinchingly truthful on every page, What Girls Learn is a book that will be read--and cherished-- for years to come.

In her debut novel, What Girls Learn, author Karin Cook takes familiar--and familial--territory and turns it neatly on its head. Tilden, the 12-year-old narrator of Cook's tale, and her 11-year-old sister Elizabeth are suddenly uprooted from a hardscrabble life in Atlanta and moved to Long Island when their mother falls in love with a man they've never met. Fortunately, Nick turns out to be a kind man, and the girls' enjoy a temporary stability. Then Frances, their mother, discovers a lump in her breast. While she is hospitalized, her predatory brother arrives, and the sisters are thrown back upon a bond that, although stretched by sibling rivalry, can never be broken.

Karin Cook depicts the inner lives of girls on the verge of adolescence with tremendous insight, and in Tilden, she has found a narrator both eloquent and observant. What Girls Learn explores notions of family and femininity and the transcendence of love, even in the face of loss.

Recommended to book clubs by 0 of 0 members.