Paulina & Fran | Granta

  • Published: 03/09/2015
  • ISBN: 9781783781607
  • Granta Books
  • 256 pages

Paulina & Fran

Rachel B. Glaser

Sharp-tongued, fearsome Paulina meets lovely, listless Fran one night at a house party held near their privileged New England art school. Together they drift through their classes, critique their fellow students, lavish attention on their curls and nurture their shared dreams of genius. But when their burgeoning friendship tips from intensity into enmity our two heroines find themselves cast out from the halcyon days of art school, divided from one another and set adrift in the increasingly disappointing world of adulthood.

Written with wit and brio, dancing between razor-sharp satire and a tender portrait of unrequited love, Paulina & Fran is a beguiling whirl of a novel from a writer of immense talent.

I loved the seductive atmosphere of Paulina & Fran, the exuberant and funny writing, and the wonderfully unpredictable characters

Emma Healey, author, Elizabeth is Missing

A beautifully complex and brutal exploration of female friendship, I loved this book and it savaged me. I also laughed A LOT. Hilarious and intoxicating, thrillingly treacherous, Paulina & Fran writhes like a bag of snakes. Rachel B. Glaser is a stylist, a bandit and a necromancer. Reading her is like leaping with someone from planet to planet, ending up on your back, dazed, in fine company

Emma Jane Unsworth, author, Animals

Reading Paulina & Fran is like watching a beautiful woman expertly throw knives into a wall. Viciously funny, tender, and sexy all at once, every page full of deft and skewering observations. No one is spared

Catherine Lacey, author, Nobody is Ever Missing

The Author

Rachel B. Glaser is an American writer, poet and artist. In 2013, she received the McSweeney’s Amanda Davis Fiction Award.

More about the author →

Rachel B. Glaser on Granta.com

In Conversation | The Online Edition

Rachel B. Glaser | Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists

Rachel B. Glaser & Luke Neima

'If you can surprise yourself with your writing then it’s a lot more fun, and it’s a lot more interesting. That often involves creating characters you’ve never met or writing people that are not like you.’

Fiction | Granta 139

Day 4

Rachel B. Glaser

‘She sat sweating on the curb as her mother’s narrow face hovered over the parking lot like a hologram.’

Fiction | Granta 139

First Semester

Rachel B. Glaser & John Maradik

‘When she reached her hand into his underwear, again she felt the turtle.’