What girls learn

the long version

What Girls Learn takes readers on an intimate and haunting journey into the landscape of girlhood and the complex terrain of the family. Wise, bittersweet, and above all intensely human, this astonishingly powerful novel enchants readers with its humor and insight even as it breaks their hearts. In this emotional novel, Tilden, an adolescent girl, & her slightly younger sister move with their mother to suburban Long Island, where Tilden has social problems & her mother discovers she is dying of cancer. The narrator is 12-year-old Tilden of Atlanta, one of two daughters of a single mother. The story begins on a happy note as the mother finds a man and the trio move north to Long Island. Tragedy strikes when the mother is diagnosed with breast cancer. A first novel.