Alina Grabowski's debut novel 'Women and Children First' lives up to the hype

Months before its publication this week, Alina Grabowski’s debut novel “Women and Children First” had landed on many high-profile book lists, including Vogue’s “The Best Books of 2024 So Far,” Oprah Daily’s “The Most Anticipated Books of 2024” and the New York Times’ “27 Works of Fiction Coming This Spring.”

The keen interest was due to advance word on the novel and to the cachet of its publisher, Zando, founded in 2020 by CEO Molly Stern, whose previous publishing career included playing a vital role in publishing some bestsellers such as Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” and Michelle Obama’s “Becoming.” Zando is a collection of imprints that comprise partnerships with an individual celebrity (Sarah Jessica Parker’s SJP Lit is the imprint for “Women and Children First”) or a literary group with a particular focus (the Hillman Grad Books imprint publishes writing by underrepresented communities).

“Women and Children First” is the rare book that lives up to such high-flying hype. It is a profoundly moving story about 10 women and teenage girls whose lives are forever changed by the sudden death of Lucy, an artistic and charismatic high school senior. The characters are connected to Lucy in varying degrees, and this tale is as much about each of them as it is about her.

The setting is the fictional Nashquitten, a small fishing and resort town on the southeastern Massachusetts coast. Grabowski, who grew up in a seaside Massachusetts town, imbues the imagined one with resonant details, like the economic and cultural divides between seasonal and permanent residents, and for good and ill, the extent to which lives overlap in the year-round community.

In recent years, a troubling number of Nashquitten teens have lost their lives to overdoses or drunk driving. But Lucy’s death is singular. She died at a crowded house party, under mysterious circumstances. Did she fall off that second-story deck? Was she pushed? Did she jump?

Lucy was a talented visual artist with dreams of living in New York City. She had a best friend, Sophia, with whom she shared most, but not all, of her secrets. Although she had epilepsy, Lucy was determined not to be defined by her seizures. Still, Lucy’s mother considers her daughter’s disease “the first domino that knocked down several others.”

Much of “Women and Children First” is about first dominos: how one interaction — a comment by a close female friend, the way love is given or withheld by a parent—can alter a person’s path in life. The novel’s male characters feel incidental, even as they help drive the plot.

This seems more a feature than a bug. Within the narrative, Grabowski masterfully explores the complexity of female friendships: their power to enrich, to sustain and to scar. One young woman reflects, “Half of life is just waiting to tell something to the person who knows you best.”

Structurally, the book is divided into two parts: “Pre” and “Post.” The 10 chapters are each narrated by a distinctive main character, and chapter by chapter, Nashquitten’s tight microcosms of school, town and families come into focus. The narrative moves forward toward the party at a compelling pace, with the same scenes told from different and increasingly revealing perspectives. A portrait of Lucy emerges entirely from those who knew her.

The story begins in senior year. Janet, the high school’s tightly wound principal, focuses so obsessively on superficial details she dismisses harassment rumors about a male teacher. Twentysomething guidance counselor Layla sees the problematic conduct that Janet does not, but Layla has always struggled to make herself heard by anyone in authority.

Olivia, the principal’s daughter, feels no one ever truly sees her, at school or at home. Socially perceptive Jane keeps her distance from Olivia, considering her “one of those girls who makes problems not only for herself but for everyone around her.” Olivia’s best friend Marina muses that “Olivia can talk you into crazy shit… She knows exactly what to say, is the thing.”

Each girl’s viewpoint reads as utterly valid, all adding up to a nuanced, multifaceted reality.

The high school atmosphere is unnervingly fraught in a very current way, drenched in social media and over-achievement pressure. Lucy’s best friend Sophia has applied to 13 colleges but urgently wants to add more. The no-nonsense PTA president is mystified by the persistent angst of her daughter Emma and Emma’s friends. Layla views most of the school’s parents “so over-involved they’d reattach their kid’s umbilical cord if they could.”

Layla shares a house with 20-something Mona, unhappily back in her hometown, working in a local fish market while she applies to grad schools. To most people, including her frenemy Natalie, Mona can appear shallow. Yet her internal monologues contain some of the sharpest, comic insights about other people and about herself. Listening to some high school girls talk, Mona thinks “They look like deer when, really, they’re wolves.”

The book’s second section centers on the night of the house party and its aftermath. By this point, Grabowski has skillfully crafted so many interlocking lives that what emerges feels both surprising and inevitable.

At one point after Lucy’s death, her mother concludes that life is mainly “the people you commit yourself to and the ways in which you love and hurt one another.” Grabowski has created a novel that illuminates these very human ties; how even through tragedy they can shift and strengthen, told by female characters who will stay with you long after you rest this book on a shelf.