The Year It Rained

Elizabeth Stein, seventeen, is an uneasy survivor. Back from a year of madness, she finds that everyone she knows is falling apart and the questions she asks seem to have no answers. But the pastincluding the year it rainedmust be untangled.

Her father, a well-known Hollywood biographer, is sliding toward alcoholism. Her mother, the one "everyone wants," is trapped by a lifetime of self-denial. Then, there are Elizabeths two boyfriends: Hal, the older history teacher, and Jonathan, her own age, whose electrifying lovemaking excites and terrifies her. Her lost friend, Tabby, cant help her now; neither can the stream of therapists, psychiatrists, and psychologists whose terrible mistakes and superficial solutions only make things worse. Thoughtful, keenly self-observant, feisty, and self-mocking, shes determined not to be a victim.

In powerfully moving prose that will inevitably be compared to The Bell Jar and I Never Promised You a...