"Marlena," by Julie Buntin

"Marlena” (Henry Holt, 2017), Julie Buntin’s debut novel, is a real knockout. The main characters are two young girls, Marlene (age 17) and the narrator, Cat (age 15). At the beginning of the story, Cat and her mother and brother have just moved from the city of Pontiac, Michigan, to a very rural area in northern Michigan, a big change for Cat. She meets Marlene, who lives next door, and they become fast friends. But very early in the novel, we find that Marlene dies very soon after Cat meets her. The book’s chapters alternate between the time of their friendship in Michigan and a period twenty years later when Cat is living in New York. In the latter setting, although she has a good job in a library, and a reasonably good marriage, and loves New York, Cat is still haunted by the loss of her friend Marlena, and by guilt about whether she could have done more to save her. The main focuses of the book are an intense and fine-grained depiction of adolescence among those teenagers who are both exuberant and on some level hopeless; an up-close look at the powerful and destructive influence of drugs in rural areas; a portrait of families in trouble; and the ever-present difference that even small variations in social class (degrees of poverty and education, in this case) make. But portrayal of these issues, as important as they are, never detracts from the vivid, realistic portrayal of the central friendship of the novel, and of the way such friendships seem to be the most important thing in the world to young girls. There are also boys, there is also sex, there is also the general fearlessness and recklessness of adolescence, with its pranks and problems and bad decisions. But the friendship, along with the serious drugs that Marlena does (including opioids) and the drinking that Cat does, both as a teenager and as an adult, are always front and center. Both girls have been influenced toward, perhaps doomed to, their addictions by their addicted parents. The difference seems to be that Cat has an extra degree of stability in her family, as well as a little bit more social class stability (not a lot, but enough to make a difference). But will she ever forgive herself for surviving when Marlena did not? For me this book had the added power of its setting in northern Michigan. Although I never experienced the kinds of places and lives these two young women did, and although I led a much more privileged life than they did, I do know that area of Michigan a little, and some of the details about it resonate and ring true. Buntin is a powerful and insightful writer, and I look forward to reading more of her work in the future.