Cover of The Big Girls

The Big Girls

Helen is serving a life sentence at Sloatsburg women's prison for the murder of her children.

Dr. Louise Forrest, a recently divorced mother of an eight-year-old boy, is the new chief of psychiatry there.

Read more

Captain Ike Bradshaw is the corrections officer who wants her.

And Angie, an ambitious Hollywood starlet contacted by Helen, is intent on nothing but fame.

Drawing these four characters together in a story of shocking and disturbing revelations, The Big Girls is an electrifying novel about the anarchy of families, the sometimes destructive power of maternal instinct, and the cult of celebrity.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 256 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked The Big Girls? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked The Big Girls. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Mouthing the Words Shares fiction, mental illness, women writers
  2. The Rise of Life on Earth Shares fiction, literary fiction
  3. Thicker Than Water Shares fiction, mental illness, literary fiction
  4. Hesitation Wounds Shares fiction, mental illness, literary fiction

“People who read The Big Girls tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Valerie Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Woman Who Wrote SCUM
  2. Falling Angels
  3. The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith
  4. The Ferguson Affair

“If you want more of the same (literary fiction about mental health), start with these.”

  1. My Happy Life
  2. Nearer Than the Sky
  3. The Good Patient
  4. Scarred

“If it was the mental illness that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Imagine Me Gone
  2. Nobody Is Ever Missing
  3. The Center of Winter
  4. What I Had Before I Had You

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Life in Prison: Eight Hours at a Time
  2. Freak
  3. The Good Mother
  4. Escape Routes For Beginners