The Big Girls by Susanna Moore

Helen is serving a life sentence at Sloatsburg women's prison for the murder of her children. Dr. Louise Forrest, a recently divorced mother of an eight-year-old boy, is the new chief of psychiatry there. Captain Ike Bradshaw is the corrections officer who wants her. And Angie, an ambitious Hollywood starlet contacted by Helen, is intent on nothing but fame. Drawing these four characters together in a story of shocking and disturbing revelations, The Big Girls is an electrifying novel about the anarchy of families, the sometimes destructive power of maternal instinct, and the cult of celebrity. Editorial Reviews Devastatingly accurate.... Engrossing and beautifully rendered. -The New York Times Book ReviewThe most unflinching, graphically sexual, violent, literary female fiction writer alive. . . . Susanna Moore writes the way Frida Kahlo painted. -Los Angeles Times Book ReviewThe Big Girls carries a voyeuristic charge, the confessions so intimate you feel embarrassed for looking, but the whip-smart narration makes it impossible to turn away. -The Plain Dealer Hypnotizing. . . . A remarkable feat. -The Washington Post Book World - From the Publisher ... as riveting as the body count can be, it can overshadow Moore's subtler, more quietly lacerating talents. She has a pitch-perfect ear for the vernacular, for moving character detail and for the kind of bloodless savagery that the ravenous appetite for fame produces, as when Angie guilelessly explains, Rafael makes perfect sense at this point when I'm making that important transition from TV star to artist. Moore is quite funny and, particularly in her nuanced portrait of the tragic Helen, she is capable of the sort of empathy that encompasses the full range, for good and ill, of being human. It didn't turn out very good, I know, Helen says, but I tried my best. With pity and tenderness, one believes her, and her sliver of hapless self-knowledge after the irrevocable fact cuts deeper, perhaps, than the more spectacular crimes that both sever and bind the haunted characters who populate this dreamy prison. - The New York Times - Stacey D'Erasmo In spare yet hypnotic prose, Moore (One Last Look) examines the bond between a young psychiatrist and a mentally ill patient in her devastating sixth novel, set at an upstate New York federal women's prison. Sloatsburg Correctional Institution, a former sanitarium on the west bank of the Hudson, is dangerous, understaffed, underfinanced and overwhelmingly grim. The place epitomizes what's wrong with our nation's prison system and stands as a warning about our growing mental health crisis. Moore deftly shifts perspective among her principal characters--Dr. Louise Forrest, Sloatsburg's psychiatry chief; Helen Nash, a suicidal inmate who's been convicted of killing her children; Capt. Henry Ike Bradshaw, a corrections officer who's in love with Louise; and Angie Mills, a Hollywood actress (and Louise's ex-husband's girlfriend), whom Helen believes is her long-lost sister--as the action hurtles to an oddly satisfying resolution. Reading this heartbreaker is like watching a train wreck while dialing for help on your cellphone. You can't turn away. 75,000 printing; author tour. (May)Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information - Publishers Weekly Moore unravels the connections among four women: an inmate at Sloatsberg women's prison, the prison psychiatrist, a young corrections officer, and an intensely focused young star. With a five-city tour. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information. - Library Journal It's difficult to separate the problems of the prisoners from those of their keepers in this unrelentingly dark multilayered prison drama from Moore (One Last Look, 2003, etc.), told from the point of view of three women and one man. After six months on the psychiatric staff at a woman's prison in upstate New York, Louise is still struggling to adjust to the bleak conditions. At first, readers may wonder along with Louise's coworkers why a woman with her credentials chooses to practice there, but the lonely, divorced Louise, whose only joy is her young son Ransom, carries her own psychological baggage. She becomes increasingly involved in the case of Helen, a particularly troubled prisoner/patient. Helen hears voices she calls The Messengers, and clings to the belief that she was protecting her children when she killed them. A victim of abuse that began in childhood and continued beyond marriage and childbearing, Helen also believes, with good reason, that her younger sister, given up for adoption by Helen's mother, is now a rising Hollywood starlet. Helen begins writing letters to Angie, a pill-popping actress who coincidently is romantically involved with Louise's filmmaking ex-husband Rafael. Louise becomes sexually drawn to a young prison guard, Ike. Although Ike has his own narrative sections, he remains a cardboard cutout of male attractiveness. After walking in on Louise and Ike in bed, Ransom tells Rafael that Ike accosted him sexually. Outraged, the never-fleshed-out but alluring Rafael whisks Ransom off to California, where Angie cares for him in dangerously haphazard fashion. Distraught, Louise begins to fall apart emotionally. Meanwhile, Helen slips deeper into psychosis andultimately commits suicide. Angie, who has come to believe she is Helen's sister, gets Ransom to admit he lied and brings him home to Louise, who has been fired from the prison and now misses it terribly. Compelling, although nothing quite jells into clarity. First printing of 75,000; Book-of-the-Month Club/Literary Guild selection - Kirkus Reviews The use of multiple narrators in this BBC production provides an interesting performance. This choice is logical as Moore's crime novel contains lots of dialogue and characters with distinct personalities. The story is mostly set at Sloatsbury Women's Prison, and the main characters include prisoners, the chief of psychiatry, corrections officers, and Angie, an ambitious Hollywood starlet. The narration is delivered in the alternating voices of four women: Helen, a schizophrenic inmate; Dr. Forrest, Captain Bradshaw, and Angie. The cast reads the hypnotic prose deftly. Voices are well suited to their credible and authentic characters. This heartbreaking novel feels like watching a train wreck that you can't stop. S.C.A. AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine - FEB/MAR 08 - AudioFile