Rating: 
Summary: An unforgettable novel
Review: Maxine Swann's book is something rare. She has put her finger on something about my personal (and what I assume is a universal) experience about becoming a woman that I don't think I have ever read before. Reading this book had a powerful impact on me akin to my first experience of reading "Catcher in the Rye" and others, but it was so beautifully unique. I will cherish this book for a long time to come.
Rating:
Summary: Mesmerizing and intense
Review: Maxine Swann's first novel flows with the rhythms of the young central character, Maya. She has spent years with her books and thoughts, but finds herself at boarding school aching for life to begin. Maya opens up to a like-minded friend at school and they share their fears, insecurities and philosophical wonderings with each other. They loose their detached coolness and clear headedness when their quest for life experiences delivers them boyfriends. Ms. Swann's style is sublime and beautiful as she leads us from quiet thoughtfulness into new adventures and through psychological unrest. What strikes me the most is how much more intimate the girls are with each other (no, not physically) than they are with their boyfriends (yes, physically). It's a wonderful journey that rings true.
Rating:
Summary: Teenage Intimacy
Review: Maxine Swann's first novel flows with the rhythms of the young central character, Maya. She has spent years with her books and thoughts, but finds herself at boarding school aching for life to begin. Maya opens up to a like-minded friend at school and they share their fears, insecurities and philosophical wonderings with each other. They loose their detached coolness and clear headedness when their quest for life experiences delivers them boyfriends. Ms. Swann's style is sublime and beautiful as she leads us from quiet thoughtfulness into new adventures and through psychological unrest. What strikes me the most is how much more intimate the girls are with each other (no, not physically) than they are with their boyfriends (yes, physically). It's a wonderful journey that rings true.
Rating:
Summary: Adolescence Remembered
Review: Maxine Swann's novel is an intense and vivid evocation of the painful and sweet years between childhood and adulthood. It has a dreamlike quality in which events seem to toss the characters around. Their dazed reactions are carefully traced by Swann who has an uncanny talent for reminding the reader of the mysteries of awakening and transformation.
This is a book to be read and re-read.
Rating:
Summary: Real Girls
Review: Maya and Roe don't do what we want them to do. They don't make choices we think they should make. And if they do, they don't react how we think they should. These two girls speak a private language. Observing them through the author's careful, thoughtful prose and dialogue, we come to learn that they are entirely real people. Through their experiences we begin to understand how powerful the separation is between our interior and exterior worlds, and what is universal about life seems to be the ongoing struggle between how we feel and what we chose.
Rating:
Summary: I cannot wait to read this author's next book...
Review: Never before has a novel taken me so far into the intextricable depths of the psyche of an adolecent girl. The complexity of maturing into womanhood is exquisitely unfolded upon us in the story of Maya.
Rating:
Summary: Gem of a book
Review: Swann writes with startling honesty and vivid detail about the intense relationship between young girls. This is a hauntingly beautiful book. She has invited us into a world of complex and subtle friendship. From the first pages we care about Maya and Roe and their serious if not heartbreaking search for love and meaning. I could not put this book down. It is wonderful to be reminded how compelling good writing can be. And it is rare to find this kind of gem in the bookstores.
Rating: 
Summary: Finding Yourself
Review: This excellent first novel is best complemented with "Sleep Toward Heaven" women as they develop and evolve.
Rating:
Summary: A nuanced study of the inner lives of young women
Review: Two girls, emotionally stranded by their parents, set out to compose their own characters and lives with deliberate fearlessness. They choose their futures with an arbitrariness that older people, with their weighted experience of consequence, can ill afford.Swann conveys a wealth of rich sensations with delicious immediacy. I can't think of another work in recent years that captures so many incomprehensible, fleeting perceptions with such wonderous, nuanced specificity.
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