Brittany Ackerman's debut novel, The Brittanys, is a deeply felt, often funny foray into both the ephemeral and lasting pangs of upper-middle class women's adolescence. Narrator Brittany is one of five Brittanys who have been friends since childhood. She and her closest friend, Brittany Jensen, begin to drift apart as the two start high school and Jensen accuses the narrator of being "boy crazy." Over the course of a year, the narrator explores life without her best friend, traversing bad dates, sexual politics, feel-good consumerism and self-centered friendships in search of what from childhood can last.
The precision and accuracy with which Ackerman captures this particular early-2000s period of American adolescence makes for a richly nostalgic portrait of lost time. The sometimes absurd but often recognizable details of this moment--the smell of Eggo waffles in the toaster, a Nokia flip phone as a status symbol, learning to play Nintendo 64 games to impress sophomore boys--contribute to the sense of humor and retrospective self-awareness, even while the novel always treats its narrator with a tender generosity. And while the narrator's adventures in the realm of romance and sex form the basis of the plot, it is the poignant female relationships--between best friends and mothers and daughters--that reveal the story's true soul. Amidst the satirical mentions of half-Coke, half-Sprite mixtures and prepubescent boys who look like the stars of Jackass, Ackerman locates an achingly realistic but unsentimentally clear-eyed portrait of the youthful relationships that end but are never truly over. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor