“..a thrilling and important examination of female adolescent friendship … Marlena feels timeless, its vivid characters suspended in the difficult moment of awakening just before adulthood. It is a gem of a book, brief and urgent, nearly perfect in its execution … We know from the start that Marlena will die. Buntin tells us this on the fourth page of her novel. This early revelation is a daring authorial move that, in lesser hands, would knock the tension out of the narrative. But when Marlena finally meets her end, it feels neither inevitable or muted: Instead, the loss of this young, bright life strikes readers as both surprising and tragic … as Buntin heartbreakingly illustrates in the elegiac Marlena, there is a firm line that exists between children who are loved and cared for — even by a parent who makes mistakes — and children who are not.”
–Liz Moore, The Boston Globe, April 7, 2017
