The Nowhere Girls
Author: Amy Reed
Publication Date: October 10th 2017
Publisher: Simon Pulse
The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed is about three young women who decide to fight the rape culture that exists within their small town.
Grace Salter moves with her parents to Prescott, Oregon from Kentucky. On her first day at her new high school, she makes what becomes a significant decision to sit with Erin DeLillo and Rosina Suarez in the school cafeteria at lunch time and quickly bonds with them. Erin DeLillo is an outsider who is sensitive, has trouble understanding human behaviour and hates unpredictability. Rosina Suarez comes from a large extended family and looks after her grandmother and younger cousins. She holds down a job at her uncle's Mexican restaurant to help make ends meet, but would much rather spend her time performing and playing in a band.
Grace hears about Lucy Moynihan, the former tenant of her new home, who was raped by boys from her school and then ostracized by most of the town. The boys who raped Lucy got away with it, while their friends, family, teammates, school and authorities all looked the other way. It was easier to ignore Lucy's claims than give her justice. Grace is horrified that no one defended Lucy and is concerned because it could have been any of them this could have happened to. After a discussion with Erin and Rosina, the three decide to form an anonymous group called the Nowhere Girls. They organise a meeting and send emails to all the girls at school offering a safe place to share their own experiences, not just in regards to Lucy, but how they feel they are treated as women.
Grace, Erin and Rosina are surprised, but pleased when a variety of their classmates turn up at the first meeting. Initially the hurdle they must overcome is a lack of understanding from the new Nowhere Girls to each other's situations and feelings. Some girls come out of curiosity. One girl felt she didn't have anyone to support her after approaching the school principal and being told it was her own fault for being groped – that she had put herself in a 'compromising position'. All the girls have a different reason for being there.
The author gets inside the minds of all the girls, each with their own set of circumstances and pressures to look and behave a certain way, as well as to expect and accept the behaviour that follows. They show overwhelming concern for others’ opinions, to be noticed or not noticed. The boys proudly compare how many girls they slept with as a form of competition. The ones who don't participate say nothing. The enabling from parents, teachers, coach and principal allows the boys to feel braver. Many in the town felt guilty for their treatment of Lucy, but refused to acknowledge what really happened or accept their complicity. I found it fascinating to see how the community dealt with the Nowhere Girls, their thoughts and reactions. Even more interesting to me was how the girls themselves address and adjust to their own relationships in the aftermath.
The story is not solely about the main protagonists – Grace, Erin and Rosina, or even what happened to Lucy. The Nowhere Girls are every girl and the book features widely diverse, realistic characters. It is about all the girls who have their own stories and voices waiting to be heard. The victim shaming, blaming and sexism represented is authentic and plausible. This is an intensely powerful and timely novel that I recommend.
Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for the ARC provided for review.
From the publisher:
Three misfits come together to avenge the rape of a fellow classmate and in the process trigger a change in the misogynist culture at their high school transforming the lives of everyone around them in this searing and timely story.
Who are the Nowhere Girls?
They’re everygirl. But they start with just three:
Grace Salter is the new girl in town, whose family was run out of their former community after her southern Baptist preacher mom turned into a radical liberal after falling off a horse and bumping her head.
Rosina Suarez is the queer punk girl in a conservative Mexican immigrant family, who dreams of a life playing music instead of babysitting her gaggle of cousins and waitressing at her uncle’s restaurant.
Erin Delillo is obsessed with two things: marine biology and Star Trek: The Next Generation, but they aren’t enough to distract her from her suspicion that she may in fact be an android.
When Grace learns that Lucy Moynihan, the former occupant of her new home, was run out of town for having accused the popular guys at school of gang rape, she’s incensed that Lucy never had justice. For their own personal reasons, Rosina and Erin feel equally deeply about Lucy’s tragedy, so they form an anonymous group of girls at Prescott High to resist the sexist culture at their school, which includes boycotting sex of any kind with the male students.
Told in alternating perspectives, this groundbreaking novel is an indictment of rape culture and explores with bold honesty the deepest questions about teen girls and sexuality.
You can read my original Isabella's Reading Corner post on The Nowhere Girls here.
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