Contemporary Authors

• Sorority - May 1, 2018 Gallery/Scout Press,

Print Marked Items
Sorority
Susan Maguire
Booklist.
114.16 (Apr. 15, 2018): p21.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text: 
Sorority.
By Genevieve Sly Crane.
May 2018. 288p. Simon & Schuster/Scout, $26 (9781501187476).
On an unnamed New England campus, an unnamed sorority reels from the death of one of its sisters. Margot's demise is only a minor taste of the
many horrors suffered by the sisters--everything from eating disorders to OCD to desperation for parental approval, each darkly rendered in a
distinct voice. Interspersed is the chorus, which tries to make sense of the rumors surrounding each girl, Margot's death, and the resultant fallout.
The novel reads like a collection of interconnected short stories, with female characters who may look familiar (sorority girls, obviously), but a
true understanding of their natures lies just out of reach, even as backstories and tales of postcollege life are unfolded. (The one false note is the
treatment of the only overweight sister, who is pathetic and lonely and literally busts the seams of a bridesmaid dress.) Too literary to be the dishy
fun one might expect from a novel about a sorority, Cranes debut will appeal to readers who relish an unreliable narrator and those for whom
traditional tales of sisterhood read as facile.--Susan Maguire
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Maguire, Susan. "Sorority." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2018, p. 21. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537268059/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=32ba4325. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537268059
Crane, Genevieve Sly: SORORITY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text: 
Crane, Genevieve Sly SORORITY Scout Press/Simon & Schuster (Adult Fiction) $26.00 5, 1 ISBN: 978-1-5011-8747-6
Traditions abide in this sorority house, especially when it comes to members who are as unhinged and harsh as the group's 1863 founders.
This book has everything you might expect in a novel about a sorority: eating disorders everyone is aware of but ignores; unplanned pregnancy;
sexual assault perpetrated by brutish frat boys; trichotillomania; age-old Greek traditions such as swallowing fireplace ashes and assigning meanspirited
nicknames in the interest of fun; and ample drug and alcohol abuse. The last, coupled with a heart defect, leads to the focal event of the
story: the death of Margot, who lived in Room Epsilon. Each section of the book is told from the perspective of a different sister, one of the
founders, or--in keeping with the Greek mythology conceit--the chorus who sees all. Margot's overdose--or was it suicide?--reverberates
throughout the story as the sisters carry on with their own lives, handling their own personal triumphs, tumults, and tragedies. But one sister in
particular, Deirdre, may never recover. Her relationship with Margot went beyond the frenemy status of sisterhood: They fell in love. Crane, once
a sorority sister herself, skillfully reproduces sorority life: the particular cruel caring of these friendships, the intensity of this way station before
the adult world, the way the decisions made during that time can stay with a young woman. Crane shows that the college experience is not all
frivolity and fecklessness but the foundation of autonomous personhood, that plunging in is risky and unknowable. As Margot once said,
"Pledging is like sprinting in the dark without a flashlight."
The strain and pain of sorority sisterhood are not redeemed by lifelong kinship in this unflinching depiction of hardhearted girls growing up.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Crane, Genevieve Sly: SORORITY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530650853/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8e897dbe. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530650853

• Bustle
  https://www.bustle.com/p/sorority-by-genevieve-sly-crane-is-a-dark-hypnotic-novel-about-the-aftermath-of-a-sisters-death-8953256
  Word count: 1045

  'Sorority' By Genevieve Sly Crane Is A Dark & Hypnotic Novel About The Aftermath Of A Sister's Death
  By SADIE TROMBETTA
  May 2 2018

  Greek life on American college campuses is like a boarded up house everyone is dying to see inside of, but too afraid to enter. It's a culture shrouded in mystery and secrecy, one weighed down under its own sordid history that includes hazing, sexual abuse, binge drinking, and drug overdose. To understand it, they say, you have to be a part of it — that is, unless you pick up Genevieve Sly Crane’s dark and hypnotic debut, Sorority.

  If you're looking for a novel with a neatly packaged ending, Sorority is not the book for you. But, if you're looking for mesmerizing prose and fascinating female characters, then you're going to want to move Crane's debut to the top of your reading list. Out now from Scout Press, Sorority is an bewitching collection of linked stories about a group of contemporary women who all belong to the same sorority house at an unnamed New England university. Each one troubled in their own way, these sisters are anything but the pearl-clutching, plaid-wearing girls of sorority recruitment videos you've seen before. They're captivating and damaged young women grappling with the social pressure of Greek life, the academic rigor of college, and the armfuls of baggage each one brings into the house from their lives on and off campus.

  At the center of it all is Margot, a sister who died in the house. In each short chapter, which serve as standalone stories about specific sisters that take place before, during, and after college, readers get a glimpse of how Margot's death affects the other women in her sorority. For some sisters, like Margot's roommate and lover Deidre, her death casts a shadow over everything else, tainting both past memories and the present moment with painful grief and regret. For others, like Kyra who is consumed by an unplanned pregnancy that threatens to derail her entire future, Margot is a background figure that adds depth to their own story.

  Sorority by Genevieve Sly Crane, $17, Amazon

  Throughout the multivoice narrative, Sorority peers into the lives, minds, and hearts of incredibly complex women that readers won't be able to stop thinking about. Without pulling any punches, Crane dives headfirst into the dark waters that is Greek life, never shying away from showing the deviant side of sisterhood, the sting of betrayal, the pressures from co-eds, or the temptation of drugs and alcohol. The effect not only creates a compulsively readable book, but a compelling examination of female friendship and the unsteady transition from girl to woman.

  By turns wickedly humorous and deeply haunting, Sorority isn't a whodunit, but Crane's prose turns it into something of a addictive page-turner. The writing throughout the book is beautiful and darkly enchanting, but the strongest and most unforgettable chapters are those from Deidre's point of view.

  In describing the mental preparation that goes into getting ready for her job as a naked sushi model, Deidre takes readers into the darkest, most complex corners of her mind. As not only Margot's sorority sister, but also her roommate and her lover, Deidre struggles particularly hard with her death and the guilt it makes her feel. Her chapters, which include unflinching descriptions of her pain and heartache, are among the most lyrical and the most profound.

  "I've been looking for her. Not that I believe in reincarnation, not logically. Not that I'm religious. But surely, out of six billion, her print may be identical in someone else's palm. It is also not completely impossible to discover her in another person, another object. Unlikely, but not impossible," she says in one chapter. In another, she puts it more bluntly but no less beautifully. "She did not seem dead. She seemed taken. She seemed transfigured."
  In one of the most moving scenes, Deidre describes her attempts to cope with trauma and preserve her memories of Margot:

  "I wrote it down, all of it, how she looked before: the black hair, the brown eyes, how she wore too many green shirts and not enough yellow, which was her color, how she was mean and spiteful and funny and tender. How she looked when I found her. I wrote it down and made it mine and then turned the page backward. I was a flipbook story. Over and over I brought her back and killed her, trying to find an answer in the syntax, trying to find a way to give her a better ending.
  But not every memory could be transcribed. The sneaky ones were insidious, especially if I was unfocused or drowsy, and soon they were misshapen so that in one we were smoking on the patio in winter and in another we were standing in the stairwell in red initiation robes and in others I couldn't see her hands anymore, or her eyes, and in this one she was raking with me, the air suspended in orange, the geese lazy and roosting, and the trees floated overhead, trunkless, like clouds. We stuffed piles into bags like thieves in a heist, stealing our own landscape, and she stared at me in the strange orange of my memory, telling me to wave at the man in the window, a fully realized person, an unfinished ghost."
  Sorority has everything you would expect from a book with its name — pledge hazing and nasty nicknames , creepy traditions and secret rituals, eating disorders and mental breakdowns, binge drinking and rampant drug use, campus sexual assault and a tragic death of a sister — but Crane's book it is so much more than that. It's a deft and thoughtful look at the dangerous journey girl to woman, one fraught with heartbreak, tragedy, and trauma.

  When you come to the end of Sorority you will not find a happy ending, or really, any concrete ending at all. What will find, though, is the sudden urge to dive in and read it all over again, because stories like these get under your skin and never quite leave you alone again.

• Publishers Weekly
  
  Word count: 250

  Publishers Weekly
  (starred review)
  Sorority
  Genevieve Sly Crane. Scout, $26 (288p) ISBN 978-1-5011-8747-6

  Crane’s ingenious debut follows the members of a sorority house at an unnamed Massachusetts college in the years before and after the death of sorority member Margot. Each chapter functions as a standalone story that ties back to the house. Some characters, like Margot’s roommate and lover Deirdre, have narratives that revolve largely around Margot’s life and death. For other characters, she’s a background figure as they navigate their fraught senior years of high school or their difficult post-college years. Anorexic Shannon and straight-edge Lucy grow up best friends, but pretend not to know one another as they get ready to rush. Wry, outspoken Twyla, whose dying mother wants to be euthanized, checks into a hospital after cutting herself. Hoping to end her pregnancy, Kyra goes to the first clinic she finds online and is dissuaded by its antiabortion staff. Crane’s prose is thoughtful and haunting; she expertly brings characters to life, especially in Jennifer’s chapter, in which a plain high school senior sees herself in her Crucible character Mary Warren: “I was rehearsing for many years of trying to be seen by the women I hated and adored,” she says. The multivoice structure fits the story perfectly, resulting in a stellar examination of female relationships. Agent: Robert E. Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic. (May)
  DETAILS
  Reviewed on: 03/12/2018
  Release date: 05/01/2018

• Gare's Reads and Reviews
  http://gareindeedreads.blogspot.com/2018/06/genevieve-sly-crane-sorority.html
  Word count: 721

  Genevieve Sly Crane | SORORITY

  Plot (via Goodreads):

  Prep meets Girls in White Dresses in Genevieve Sly Crane’s deliciously addictive, voyeuristic exploration of female friendship and coming of age that will appeal to anyone who has ever been curious about what happens in a sorority house.

  Twinsets and pearls, secrets and kinship, rituals that hold sisters together in a sacred bond of everlasting trust. Certain chaste images spring to mind when one thinks of sororities. But make no mistake: these women are not braiding each other’s hair and having pillow fights—not by a long shot.

  What Genevieve Sly Crane has conjured in these pages is a blunt, in your face look behind the closed doors of a house full of contemporary women—and there are no holds barred. These women have issues: self-inflicted, family inflicted, sister-to-sister inflicted—and it is all on the page. At the center of this swirl is Margot: the sister who died in the house, and each chapter is told from the points of view of the women who orbit her death and have their own reactions to it.

  With a keen sense of character and elegant, observant prose, Crane details the undercurrents of tension in a world where perfection comes at a cost and the best things in life are painful—if not impossible—to acquire: Beauty. A mother’s love. And friendship… or at least the appearance of it. Woven throughout are glimmers of the classical myths that undercut the lives of women in Greek life. After all, the Greek goddesses did cause their fair share of destruction.

  Review:

  There's a certain unfound fascination I have with stories about sororities. As a male in my early 30s, it must be the unfamiliar territory. Experiences I have never had the chance to come across and a desire to know all about what goes on behind closed doors. The general curiosity that sinks into my psyche and makes me wonder - is it as dark as it appears? Is it all fun and games? Genevieve Sly Crane answered all questions, whether I wanted them or not.

  SORORITY starts off seemingly innocent enough and in a way that I found to be not only brilliant, but ominous in a candid way. We are quickly introduced to a plethora of a characters, all allowing us an insight into their storylines using one or two quick lines. I found this to be not only smart, but sly as when we get farther into each chapter, these quick introductions don't even scratch the surface of the darkness below. Genevieve Sly Crane's writing is remarkable and bewitching. The way that she constructed this novel is not only done in a distinctive way, but her writing oozes with a dazzling prose that not only sets up the reader for some luminous stories.

  SORORITY is like a collection of short stories that are all connected within one house. I was absolutely stunned with how effective Genevieve Sly Crane was able to write these women. Each storyline is not only done spectacularly, but avoids cliches and to be honest - this woman is unafraid to reveal unlikeable characters and rather daring situations. I could not get enough of each story and the best part is each chapter tells the tale of a different woman, all unique with the ability to hold their own. She not only can adequately tell these cautionary tales of the issues women face, but does so in a way that gives her the upper hand on wrapping up the storyline within one small and fluff-free chapter.

  I loved how some stories stood on their own, some intertwined, and some left the reader wondering how far these women made it into the world an what their lives really turned out like. The ending to this one was not only haunting and harrowing, but superbly designed. I cannot say enough things about this amazing collection of stories and the effectiveness of its prose. Beautiful, dark, and utterly fantastic.

  Thank you so much to Genevieve Sly Crane and Gallery Books for this copy in exchange for my honest review.

  Rating: 5/5
  Posted 4th June by gareindeedreads

• Dan's Hamptons
  https://www.danspapers.com/2018/06/book-review-genevieve-sly-crane-sorority/
  Word count: 760

  Book Review: Genevieve Sly Crane’s ‘Sorority’ Is a Novel for Everyone
  Read the Stony Brook Southampton grad's examination of the lives of a sorority’s sisters.
  Brian Cudzilo June 11, 2018
  "Sorority" by Genevieve Sly Crane, Photo: Courtesy Scout Press, Joshua Rainey/123RF
  Facebook Twitter Google+ Pinterest Share via Email Print

  If you’re browsing the shelves at your local bookstore this summer, you’re guaranteed to come across Genevieve Sly Crane’s debut novel, Sorority (Scout Press, $26). After all, when people talk, bookstores listen—and people are talking about this novel.

  First, some housekeeping, so to speak. Sorority, despite being primarily populated with female characters, is not “chic-lit.” Also, despite its title, Sorority is not replete with Hollywood tropes of binge drinking and sex-fueled college frat parties (quite the opposite). One needn’t have been in a sorority in order to “get” the novel.

  Sorority, in fact, isn’t about a sorority, so much as an examination of the lives of a sorority’s sisters. A man browsing the stacks shouldn’t pass it over simply due to its title and the femininity it suggests. Any non-grandmother who has read The Summer Book by Tove Jansson—a book that has some similarities with Sorority—should know not to judge a book by its characters.

  If you’re looking to begin a book club, Sorority is fodder for robust conversations between book-clubbers of all ages. The relatively short and engrossing chapters make Sorority the perfect beach read. The careful, tragic language makes Sorority a before-bed read that, well, might actually keep you up all night.

  The themes and ideas presented in Sorority bring to mind a reader curled up in front of a fireplace on a rainy day, pausing at any one of countless sentences that require a moment of contemplation. All of which is to say, there’s nowhere and no place where Sorority can’t or shouldn’t be read.

  Crane, a 2013 graduate of Stony Brook Southampton’s MFA in Creative Writing and Literature program, was the Pledge Mistress of her own sorority as an undergraduate, so we’re pretty sure from the start that we’re dealing with a capable author who knows her subject.

  Once Sorority begins, any doubt is dispelled. Straight away, we are introduced to the ensemble cast as a chorus in the novel’s opening chapter. In Classical Greek drama the chorus was a group of actors who described and commented upon the main action of a play with song, dance and recitation.

  The main action reverberating through this Greek-life drama is the death—or was it suicide?—of Margot, former occupant of Room Epsilon, where no one lives now.

  Readers are first introduced to Lucy and Shannon, two Massachusetts girls, childhood friends who, unbeknownst to each other, are pledging the same sorority. We follow the two girls through ages 11, 12 and 13; into their sophomore year of high school when their friendship abruptly ends.

  We meet Twyla in a psych ward, there on suicide watch—and Twyla’s dead father who haunts her, invisible to everyone else, from the corner of every room. Deidre, a naked sushi model and Margot’s girlfriend. Kyra, who was evicted from the sorority for having become pregnant. Stella, who thought she was spending a romantic weekend in the woods with her frat-brother boyfriend, but ended up being left alone in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.

  Throughout the novel, Crane threads the lives of these sisters and others into an elaborate web of vignettes, each providing insight into the lives of the sorority’s sisters and their relationships both with each other and with the outside world. We find sisters with eating disorders and unplanned pregnancies, victims of drug abuse and sexual assault—real life tragedies set in a Greek one.

  In Sorority, Crane constructs approximately two-dozen realities, each as carefully similar as they are unique—each story playing with and against the others in interesting and compelling ways, moving along with even more interesting and compelling language. Small details are dropped here and there, sisters are referenced in passing, connecting the stories and, in a way, answering a philosophical question: How does one know, outside of their own experience, that anyone else exists.

  Sentence for sentence, Sorority might be the best new book you read this summer.

  Read more By the Book reviews

• Stephanie's Book Reviews
  https://stephaniesbookreviews.wordpress.com/2018/04/18/review-sorority-by-genevieve-sly-crane/
  Word count: 624

  STEPHANIE'S BOOK REVIEWS
  I read books. The good, bad, and in between.

  THE GOOD, BAD, AND IN BETWEEN – REVIEW LIST
  REVIEW LIST BY AUTHOR
  18
  APR
  2018

  Review: Sorority by Genevieve Sly Crane
  posted in 3 Stars by stephaniesbookreviews
  36374015

  Synopsis from Good Reads:

  Prep meets Girls in White Dresses in Genevieve Sly Crane’s deliciously addictive, compulsively readable exploration of female friendship and coming of age that will appeal to anyone who has ever been curious about what goes on in a sorority house…

  Margot is dead.

  There’s a rumor she died because she couldn’t take the pressure of being a pledge. You may not ask what happened to her. It’s not your business. But it wasn’t a suicide, if you’re wondering.

  Spring Fling will not be cancelled. The deposit is non-refundable. And Margot would have wanted the sisterhood to continue in her absence, if only to protect her sisters’ secrets: Shannon is the thinnest girl in the house (the other sisters hate her for it, but they know her sacrifice: she only uses the bathroom by the laundry room); Kyra has slept with twenty-nine boys since she started college (they are all different and all the same); Amanda is a virgin (her mincing gait and sloping posture give it away); and while half the sisters are too new to have known Margot, Deirdre remembers her—she always remembers.

  With a keen sense of character and unflinching, observant prose, Crane exposes the undercurrents of tension in a world where perfection comes at a cost and the best things in life are painful—if not impossible—to acquire: Beauty. A mother’s love. And friendship…or at least the appearance of it.

  I received a copy of this title via NetGalley. It does not impact my review.

  Sorority will be available on May 1, 2018.

  I did not go to a college that had sororities (nor would I have tried to join one if there were), but I really enjoyed the show Greek, so that’s kind of what I was expecting from this book. However, Sorority was not at all like I anticipated. It did not really follow a typical plot structure, but was more shorter vignettes of different girls from the House. I was a little taken aback at first because that’s not generally something I like, but I found the writing so addictive that it didn’t end up bothering me that much.

  The story was very character-driven. All the girls were a little hard to keep straight and I can’t say that any of them were that likable or redeemable, but I found a few of their stories kind of fascinating. Even for the ones I didn’t like as much, I found the writing compulsive enough to want to find out what happened. The downside of that, though, is that there is not really any conclusion to the story. Several of the characters we saw a few years after college, but even then their stories did not feel complete. Part of me really dislikes open-endings so this was hard for me. I also did not really understand what was happening at the end of the book.

  Overall, once I got over my preconceived expectations I did like this book. I thought the writing was really addictive. I don’t think it will be for everyone, though. I think readers who really enjoy some in depth character study and don’t mind open-endings will really enjoy it.

  Overall Rating (out of 5): 3 Stars