The Girls from Corona del Mar - (Vintage Contemporaries) by Rufi Thorpe (Paperback)

About the Book

"Growing up in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Southern California, Mia always compared herself unfavorably with best friend Lorrie Ann, who had a serene sweetness and goodness and, in Mia's eyes, a perfect family. A series of personal tragedies befalls Lorrie Ann and pulls the two friends in divergent directions: Mia to Yale and eventual success as a classics scholar; Lorrie Ann to early widowhood, motherhood to a severely handicapped son, and, eventually, drug addiction. When Lorrie Ann unexpectedly turns up in Istanbul, where Mia is living on a research grant, Mia must reassess everything she thought she knew about herself, her friend, and her perceptions."--

Book Synopsis

Best friends Mia and Lorrie Ann couldn't be more different; where Mia is reckless and proudly hard-hearted, Lorrie Ann is kind, serenely beautiful, and seemingly immune to the kind of teenage mistakes that Mia can't help but make.

But within a few years, fortunes change. Suddenly, Mia is free to grow up and adventure, falling in and out of love while Lorrie Ann is weighed down by responsibilities at home. And when good, nice, brave Lorrie Ann stops being so good, Mia must question how well she ever really knew her best friend in the first place.

Review Quotes

Nominated for the International Dylan Thomas Prize
Nominated for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize

"A ravishing, stay-up-all-night reading kind of novel--a sad, funny, almost impossibly good debut." --MORE

"I'm still thinking and dreaming about this book and the heartbreakingly real women I met in its pages." --Emily Gould, author of Friendship

"A slim book that leaves a deep impression. . . . Depicts friendship with affection and brutality, rendering all its love and heartbreak in painstaking strokes." --Los Angeles Times

"Just when you believe the ubiquitous 'literature is dead' declarations are true, there comes a novel like The Girls from Corona del Mar." --The Boston Herald

"A knockout. . . . Worldly, rambunctious, feminist, morally interrogative." --Elle

"Will nail you right in the heart." --Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

"A gratifyingly honest dispatch from the battle lines of young womanhood." --Entertainment Weekly


"One of those rare books that breaks down the wall between reality and fiction; the entire time I read this book I ached as if it were my own best friend whose life was unraveling before me. . . . Rufi Thorpe is a brilliant writer." --Vanessa Diffenbaugh, bestselling author of The Language of Flowers

"Female friendship gets its literary due. . . . [A] beautifully unfiltered study of two lives in parallel, and the confluence and reversal that gives shape to each." --Vogue.com

"[A] funny, sad, delightful debut." --Anton DiSclafani, author of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

"Elegant yet intense . . . . Take the time to get to know The Girls from Corona del Mar and contemplate the beautiful and thorny--even agonizing--sides of friendship." --BookPage

"Rufi Thorpe's open-hearted, open-eyed debut tells the engrossing story of a long friendship between two complex women. . . . Generous, soulful, and tough." --Maggie Shipstead, bestselling author of Seating Arrangements and Astonish Me

"Powerful" --The Huffington Post

"Full of heart. As Thorpe chronicles a complicated friendship across decades, continents and reversals in fortune, she brings to life two unforgettable characters." --J. Courtney Sullivan, bestselling author of Maine and The Engagements

"Enchanting." --Glamour

"I could say this is a remarkable debut by a gifted new voice in fiction; or that it's a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a difficult friendship; or that it has something entirely new to say about how we approach and occupy motherhood. But really, what's most impressive is its incredible vitality, its searing intensity." --Ann Packer, bestselling author of The Dive from Clausen's Pier

"Rich and introspective, The Girls from Corona del Mar is a friendship story with the literary refinement such 'best friends stories' deserve." --PopMatters.com

About the Author

RUFI THORPE received her MFA from the University of Virginia in 2009. Her first novel, The Girls from Corona del Mar, was long-listed for the 2014 International Dylan Thomas Prize and for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. She lives in California with her husband and sons.