Rainey Royal
by Dylan Landis
A fascinating study of three teenage girls in Manhattan in the 1970s, centered on Rainey Royal: beautiful, obdurate, inconsistent daughter of a jazz musician whose father’s townhouse is filled with his boyfriend Gordy (who sneaks into Rainey’s room in the middle of every night to tuck her in), with her father’s jazz acolytes, and with the absence of Rainey’s mother who decamped several years ago for an ashram. Rainey spends her afternoons (and often her schooldays) in art museums; eventually, she will become an artist who pieces together the possessions of the dead. Her friends are Tina (who often tucks in Rainey’s father – a fact we know though Rainey tries hard not to) and Leah, whom the other girls bully, who lives for science and whose adult life will revolve around lab rats.