The Brooklyn Rail

Alina Grabowski’s debut novel Women and Children First explores the female existence by exposing the harsh truths of sexuality, male dominance, and how class, ambition, and the secrets we try to keep hidden can ultimately pit one woman against the other.

The story centers around the tragic death of local teenager Lucy Anderson at a house party in the town of Nashquitten, MA and changes the lives of ten girls and women forever. Each chapter offers a different point of view from the females involved, ranging from Lucy’s principal to her best friend, and provides a deep sense of intimacy we couldn’t get otherwise. You get an inside glimpse into the lives of these ten females to see just who they are in contrast to how society perceives them. The way each woman’s story connects to the other is captivating and done well by the author, allowing the reader to put another puzzle piece together with each chapter. These points of view can challenge you, questioning who you can trust and how well you may or may not know someone, but more importantly, yourself or what you are capable of doing.

However, since there are ten points of view in the book, at times it can feel challenging to keep track of just who was who and how they are connected. This seemed especially true with those characters with less prominence in the narrative. I found myself most connected to the younger girls in the story who were directly related to the death of their friend and classmate Lucy along with the character of the mother who lost her child. These characters were presented with much more complexity. The guilt some of the girls held onto relating to Lucy’s death was uncannily real and heartfelt. The author knows what she is doing with these girls, capturing girlhood and all its awkward and dramatic moments with complete ease. It’s also the keen insight these young girls have not only in their everyday lives but about the adults around them and life itself, that help make them feel wise beyond their years without the author trying too hard to get there. They have been through a lot in their short lives. And experiencing a death, especially one as tragic as Lucy’s, can change you utterly, forcing you to grow up quickly, as these very characters soon realize. 

The author depicts grief and a sense of loss skillfully which was highlighted in the story of Lucy’s mother, Brynn was incredibly captivating, especially in the way she dealt with her grief. We don’t necessarily see her in the moments of angst and despair directly after her daughter’s death, but we do see her move through life well after, merely trying to get by. We feel her grief in her actions as we watch Brynn looking to divorce Lucy’s father, getting on dating apps in search for younger men, and befriending her dead daughter’s best friend, a teenager whom Brynn relied on to drink wine with and get dating advice from—“Which brings me to this very moment, on my couch in my condo with a seventeen-tear-old sitting beside me… she still doesn’t feel comfortable calling me Brynn even though I no longer consider myself a Mrs. or an Anderson.”

While girlhood is explored in this novel, so is womanhood. The author painted a painful portrait of what females of all ages go through every day in society, including dealing with the degrading male eye and tongue. We see most of the females either groomed or humiliated by men in one way or another. For example, while one student named Jane finds herself in an inappropriate relationship with her male teacher and tries to keep it a secret from everyone, a woman named Natalie succumbs to her demanding male boss—“I tell you to do something and you do it”—only to have him grow even more pompous—“If only everyone were so willing to be my bitch.” Layla, who works at the school, also dealt with her own harassment growing up, as seen during her flashbacks of a certain soccer male coach who acted in a way that didn’t deem appropriate:

There were stretches he wanted to try with me. Special physical therapy exercises. They were intimate, he told me, but that was what made them effective. You trust me, right? he asked. It was a silly question. We both knew the answer.

The characters in Women and Children First will hold your interest but it’s also Grabowski’s prose that is just as alluring. It’s clean and to the point without any unnecessary fluff, making for a swift and easy read. But it’s also well executed and descriptive to help paint a picture of this small coastal town with all its mysteries and lies, keeping you entranced and invested until the very end. Grabowski’s use of language is never forced and is always believable which is why you’ll finish this book faster than you might expect. Gorgeous and lush, heartbreaking and cruel, the story of this complicated community and the women who are trying to survive in it will stick with you, hauntingly present long after as young Lucy herself.