Paula Bomer grabbed us by the collar with her first novel, Nine Months. Her vivid and unsympathetic depiction of American womanhood was one of the truest we’d ever read. In her recent short story collection, Bomer paints nine unforgettable portraits of female adolescence.
With titles like “Pussies” and “Breasts,” these stories deal with the bone, blood, and sinew of being born a girl, and the inescapable consequences that are the female birthright. “I just want to jump out of any window,” begins the first story. In Inside Madeleine, we witness young women attempt to escape their own growing and shrinking bodies, men, and even other young women. This culminates in an unforgettably crushing conclusion that connects one generation of weathered girls with the next.
You may purchase this book directly from Soho Press.
Paula Bomer is also the author of Nine Months, Baby and Other Stories, and is the publisher of Sententia: A Literary Journal. She lives in Brooklyn.
She wore red high heels and tight jeans and backcombed her hair. She scared them all. She chewed gum loudly in class, she got great grades and she knew she could fuck whoever she wanted and knew she’d fuck them better than they’d ever been fucked before. So she fucked the ones she chose to fuck. She fucked the ones who deserved her shit. And then she fucked Mark.
—Paula Bomer, Inside Madeleine
