Sarvat Hasin’s Strange Girls delves into the complexity and fervor of the codependent female friendships that bloom, burn, and scar in adolescence. Told in two perspectives and two timelines, the novel reveals the truths behind the stories each woman told themselves about a life-altering relationship.
Aliya and Ava were once inseparable, but after a ten-year silence, their reunion for a mutual friend’s wedding is more than a little tense. Ava’s life has become, at least in her own eyes, completely stagnant in the wake of becoming a caretaker for her mother. Meanwhile, Aliya is successful, married, and garnered the one thing both women have always dreamed of—a book deal.
In college, both girls were writers. As enraptured were each other as they were with their own creativity and their own potential. And though Ava frequently seems on the verge of tipping onto the romantic side of their relationship, the girls’ relationship becomes fraught as adulthood and the real world approaches, not to mention the pressures of family and social lives.
As fully fledged adults, the power balance has shifted between them. While no one has seemed to measure up to Aliya in Ava’s romantic life, the gap Ava left behind has filled Aliya’s mind and writing. And yet neither can quite come to grips with the bond they had and the wounds it has left.
There is a reason that these intense bonds between women are such meaty material for literary fiction. Hasin’s prose immaculately captures the heartbreak, the growing pains, the inimitable bonds we develop at tender, malleable ages. If you’ve enjoyed books like Stephanie Wambugu’s recent Lonely Crowds, Ling Ling Huang’s Immaculate Conception, or even Toni Morrison’s Sula, Strange Girls is one to add to your TBR.
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