Review by New York Times Review
I TOOK "THE GUINEVERES" on vacation, and a friend asked what I was reading. I said it was a novel about four girls, all named Guinevere, each abandoned at the same convent by their parents. She said, "O.K., I'm in." I'm not very good at choosing beach reads - put on the spot, I once recommended an 800-page novel, and that's too heavy to hold over your face as you lie in the sun. "The Guineveres," Sarah Domet's deft and lovely debut, is the perfect weight, in all ways. It's suitable for a vacation, and you can describe it in one inviting line, but then it keeps unfolding and deepening, taking unexpected turns. The novel opens with an attempt by the teenage Guineveres to break out of the convent of the Sisters of the Supreme Adoration. They build a hollow parade float to escape in, a two-fingered victory sign made of chicken wire and colored tissue paper, "one finger away from the other universal symbol we wished to offer the convent upon our departure." The nuns declare the float to be a hand of benediction, the first hint that the girls' bid for self-determination might fail. Their plot foiled, the girls are sentenced to work in the convent's sick ward, where they encounter five comatose, unidentified soldiers, "whose wounds were so deep you could smell it on them, even outside in the courtyard, a dusty metallic scent that made us take such short breaths we felt woozy." The men have been injured in "the War," and their dog tags are missing. One wakes, and remembers his name. His tearful family arrive, and another, older girl leaves to be his nurse. The Guineveres, who had been revolted by the men's injuries, recognize a new chance to break free. If they can identify their charges, or wake them up, the families will be summoned and the girls can go home with them to tend their sons. Vere, the first Guinevere to arrive at the convent, is the primary narrator, and the most taken with tales of martyrdom and extreme faith. Ginny, frail, with wild red hair, "liked to think of herself as an artist - not so much a person who created art as a person who was misunderstood. When she felt things, she felt them deeply." Smoky-voiced Win is the strongest physically, and the least sentimental about her soldier. Gwen is the beauty and knows it, rubbing beets on her lips to redden them, flirting with the hapless resident priest. Their "revival stories," as they call the circumstances that led their parents to give them up, "those moments when our eyes really opened to the truth," are told in their own voices. Together they create a substitute family, and each has a different response to their plight. Intercut with their collective story are Vere's retellings of the lives of the saints. These chapters emerge as examples, often gory, of women rejecting the meager possibilities offered to them - forced marriage, circumscribed existence - in a desperate search for something more exalted, a greater purpose. Viewed from within the convent walls, the outer world seems hazy in its details. The War is "a continent away," and the girls want to escape to "the city." As in Vere's versions of the martyrdom of the saints, the world outside exists mostly as an abstraction, even when the girls' escape plans begin to work. But inside the walls, a vivid, pungent, complex universe hums. And for Vere, the inner life of the passions is where the extraordinary and miraculous events occur. MAILE MELOY'S latest novel for adults will be published next summer.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 23, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* When we first meet the four teenage Guineveres brassy Gwen, fragile Ginny, bold Win, and earnest Vere they are trying to escape the convent in which their various parents have left them. The attempt fails, and stern Sister Fran sentences the four to care for comatose soldiers who have been brought to the convent's infirmary. When one of the soldiers awakens, and an older girl leaves the convent to help care for him, the Guineveres see another avenue for escape. Each girl claims a solider and tends to him diligently, pinning her hopes of a life outside the convent walls on her patient. As the months wind on, and the soldiers fail to awaken, Gwen concocts a plan to identify the men in the hopes of bringing their families to the convent. The novel is narrated by Vere, who studies the female saints closely as a way to explain the lives and suffering of her and her fellow Guineveres, observing, We cling to the most painful reminders of our youth . . . perhaps so we can look back to our former selves, console them, and say: Keep going. I know how the story ends. Domet's debut is a luminous bildungsroman, brimming with wisdom about how girls view themselves, each other, and the world around them.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Four girls named Guinevere, "a coincidence that bound us together from the moment we met," arrive within two years of one another at the Sisters of the Supreme Adoration convent, in Domet's debut novel. The story is narrated by Vere, looking back to when she "was a sensitive young girl, a girl who still had faith," but Vere sees her own story as so bound up with the other Guineveres, she commonly uses the first-person plural. There is Ginny, "a delicate creature"; Winnie, funny and down to earth; and Gwen, the last to arrive and the most worldly of the four, a pretty girl who longs to get out, who devises a plan for them to escape through a hollowed-out float during the convent's annual festival. The Guineveres' punishment for their failed escape is three months of service in the convent's convalescent ward, to "reawaken [their] sense of gratitude," in the words of Father James. When a group of comatose and unidentified soldiers, severely injured in a foreign war, are brought in, the Guineveres develop a joint fantasy that the boys will wake and the girls will get to return home with them. Domet's concept is strong, an homage to The Virgin Suicides with its group narration and fixation on trapped teenage girls. Though the story is a bit too long, Domet deftly weaves in the girls' individual stories and the stories of female saints into her structure, making this a satisfying read on multiple levels. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Four girls, each named -Guinevere and each with her own secret, heart-wrenching story, are abandoned at an austere convent. Ginny, Gwen, Win, and Vere call themselves The Guineveres. While they share a name, they are very different. Artist Ginny, Hollywood hopeful Gwen, seemingly stoic Win, and nurturing Vere form a tight bond. When four unconscious soldiers arrive at the convent with war injuries, each Guinevere chooses to watch over a boy, with unforeseeable consequences. Following the church seasons and its ageless rituals, each protagonist's story of abandonment is juxtaposed with tales of defiant Catholic female saints who experienced extreme suffering. In these adolescents' cloistered existence, life is spare and difficult. These graphic stories of the saints support the theme that there are infinite ways to experience pain and loss, and this has been true throughout time. With polished prose, Domet (90 Days to Your Novel) offers an unsettling, melancholy first novel whose tone echoes that of Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides. VERDICT This phenomenal, character-driven story is mesmerizing, with just a glimmer of hope that good can emerge from the most troublesome situations. [See Prepub Alert, 4/3/16.]-Gloria Drake, Oswego P.L. Dist., IL © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Four teenagers, each named Guinevere, find themselves under the strict guidance of the nuns at Our Lady of Perpetual Adoration. Although they share a common name, Gwen, Ginny, Win, and Vere all have different and equally heartbreaking reasons for coming to live at the convent. The girls are guided by the dogmatic and controlling Sister Fran and the spiritually inept Father James. Sent to the convent's convalescent wing as punishment, the young women must take care of five unidentified and comatose soldiers. When one of the soldiers awakens and another girl is sent home with him to help with his recovery, each friend imagines a future with "her" soldier outside the constraints of the religious community. The Guineveres (as the girls call themselves) navigate the liminal spaces between childhood and adulthood, and faith and skepticism through the lens of broken families and intense friendships. Although those used to quick beach reads might find the pace slow, Domet's debut will lure readers in with well-developed characters, rich language, and small miracles. VERDICT Recommended for students who are looking for weighty romance novels.-Krystina Kelley, Belle Valley School, Belleville, IL © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Four girls, all named Guinevere, come of age in a convent in wartime.Of the Guineveres, Gwen was the prettiest, and she understood this as fact, not opinion. It is Gwen who teaches the other threeWin, Ginny, and Vereto use berries for lipstick, and she who devises the plan for their escape from the Sisters of the Supreme Adoration. Inspired by a movie in which a chorus girl popped out of a cake, the girls hide themselves inside the chicken-wireandtissue-paper hand on a parade float, planning to bust out once its parked overnight. The failure of the plot is the beginning of their friendship, as told by Vere. She never locates the story in a specific place or time, nor does she identify the war that rages beyond its borders, but she brings the convent and its inhabitants to life with great verve: the pinch-faced nuns, the alcoholic priest, and the troop of girls in their care. There are The Specials, who still had contact with their parents, who received letters and birthday cards and postcards; The Sads, whose parents had died suddenly and sometimes violently: in fires, in automobile accidents, in suicides; The Poor Girls, taken awayfrom their destitute families; The Delusionals, who believe they are going home any day now; and the Guineveres, bursting with life and nascent sexuality in these rigid confines. When four comatose soldiers are delivered to the Sick Ward of the convent, each of the girls adopts one of the boys and falls in love with him.Domets (90 Days to Your Novel, 2010) energetic prose, institutional setting, Christian fabulism, and fervidly wacky plotrevolving around the ability of the comatose to get a hard-onwill appeal to fans of John Irving. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by School Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
