Carlene Bauer

A Novel

Girls They Write Songs About

Traces the intense friendship and literary bond shared by two mid-twentieth-century New York writers through an exchange of letters that explores their beliefs about faith, passion, and the nature of acceptable sacrifice.

Frances and Bernard

A power ballad to female friendship, Girls They Write Songs About is a thrumming, searching novel about the bonds that shape us more than any love affair. We moved to New York to want undisturbed and unchecked. And what did we want? New York, 1997. As the city’s gritty edges are being smoothed into something safer and shinier, two aspiring writers meet at a music magazine. Rose—brash and self-possessed—is a staff writer. Charlotte—hesitant, bookish—is an editor. First wary, then slowly admiring, they recognize in each other an insatiable and previously unmatched ambition. Soon they’re inseparable, falling into the kind of friendship that makes every day an adventure, and makes you believe that you will, of course, achieve extraordinary things. Together, Charlotte and Rose find love and lose it; they hit their strides and stumble; they make choices and live past them. They say to each other, “Don’t ever leave me.” It’s their favorite joke, but they know that they could never say a truer thing. But then the steady beats of their sisterhood fall out of sync. They have seen each other through so much—marriage, motherhood, divorce, career glories and catastrophes, a million small but necessary choices. What will it mean if they have to give up dreaming together? That the friendship that once made them sing out now shuts them down? And even if they can reconcile themselves to the lives they’ve chosen, can they make peace with the ones they didn’t? As smart and comic as it is gloriously exuberant, Carlene Bauer’s Girls They Write Songs About takes a timeless story and turns it into a pulsing, wrecking, clear-eyed tale of two women reckoning with the loss of the friendship that helped define them, and the countless ways all the women they’ve known have made them who they are.

Describes the author's belated coming-of-age after a childhood marked by evangelical beliefs, her resistance of all activities associated with rebellion throughout her teens and early adulthood, and a pivotal relationship that was shaped by transitioning values. 30,000 first printing.

A Memoir

Not That Kind of Girl

'The instant feminist classic our generation has been waiting for' Ada Calhoun, author of Why We Can't Sleep A fabulous power ballad to female friendship, Girls They Write Songs About is a thrumming, searching novel about the bonds that shape us more than any love affair Rose and Charlotte arrive in 1990s New York, fresh out of university and fizzing with ambition. When they end up working at the same music magazine, Charlotte – earnest, bookish – is wary of brash, outspoken Rose. But hesitancy soon gives way to a unique friendship that will change both girls forever. Determined to take advantage of every day in this exasperating, jubilant city, their lives become entirely entwined. Together they find love and lose it, hit their strides and stumble, see each other through marriages, motherhood, divorces, career glories and catastrophes. But what happens when your lives start to fall out of sync? What does it mean to give up on the dreams that held a friendship together? As smart and comic as it is gloriously exuberant, Girls They Write Songs About takes a timeless story and turns it into a pulsing, wrecking, clear-eyed tale of two friends reckoning with the lives they've chosen, and the countless ways all the women they've known have made them who they are.

Carlene Bauer

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