BELLOWS FALLS — Author Pamela Moses visits Village Square Booksellers on Thursday, July 31, at 7 p.m. to discuss her debut novel, “The Appetites of Girls,” out from Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam.
For the audience that made J. Courtney Sullivan's “Commencement,” a New York Times bestseller, comes a novel about women making their way in the world.
Self-doubting Ruth is coddled by her immigrant mother who uses food to soothe and control.
Defiant Francesca believes her heavy frame shames her Park Avenue society mother. To provoke her, she consumes everything in sight.
Lonely Opal longs to be included in her glamorous mother's dinner dates until a disturbing encounter changes her desires.
Finally, Setsu, a promising violinist, staves off conflict with her jealous brother by allowing him to take the choicest morsels from her plate - and from her future.
When the four women are assigned as suitemates at Brown University, they seem to come from different worlds. But from their friendship - which grows discordantly at times and tentatively at first - Ruth, Opal, Francesca, and Setsu find strength to triumph individually and together.
Moses grew up in New Jersey, attended Brown, and took her master's in English from Georgetown. After graduating, she moved to Manhattan to teach English at a girls' school. She now lives outside New York City with her husband and two children.