Age of Consent: A Novel Hardcover – July 14, 2020

This a walloping revelation of preppy life in the 80’s with lots of sex, drugs and no discretion. A very good plot unwinding dramatically at the end. Could not put it down..

AGE OF CONSENT is a story about money - those who have it, and those who don’t. At a posh New England boarding school, Justine, the stereotypical scholarship student, and Eve, the stereotypical poor little rich girl, immediately bond. We live through their travails as high school sophomores in the early 1980s until they spend the summer in Manhattan.The story could easily be a Lifetime movie. With one exception (the scholarship boy), all the characters are beautiful or handsome. They are one-dimensional and boring. Justine envies Eve’s wealth; Eve, Justine’s sexual sophistication. Griswald Academy’s faculty includes the requisite male predator; in fact, he’s the only teacher in the book.After months of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, the girls are in New York, where we meet India, the daughter of rich dilettantes. Eve and Justine, for high school students, have impressive summer jobs. Unrealistically impressive summer jobs. India, on the other hand, spends her days snorting cocaine and drinking Champagne.The story is sad. Nobody, including the adults, is moored. But it is the 80s.

Amanda Brainerd's AGE OF CONSENT follows three teens, Justine, Eve, and India, through a pivotal year. Justine and Eve are new sophomores at their Connecticut boarding school, Griswold, trying to figure out boarding-school culture, class divisions, and their own identities. They quickly become friends, and find a compatible group in new friends Clay and Stanley. Because the novel is set in the early 1980s and almost all the adults in the girls' world are either AWOL, too busy social climbing, or actively preying on young people, both Justine and Eve soon find themselves in compromising and dangerous situations. India, the novel's third point-of-view character, is, though privileged, even more neglected than Eve and Justine--her mother has died and her dad is a hapless drug addict--and she's on her own in an apartment in Hell's Kitchen. When summer arrives, the novel switches its focus to New York: Justine moves in with India, and Eve lands an internship at a Soho gallery that represents the artist who was once in love with India's mother.This is very much a coming-of-age story, one firmly grounded in its place and time. Brainerd has a keen eye for period details, and for the intricacies of prep-school, New York City, Connecticut, and Hamptons cultures, and varying degrees of privilege--the uptown, monied but social-climbing lives of Eve's parents; the more Bohemian lives of Justine's parents, who run a theater in New Haven; of India's free-spirited mother, and of Clay's mother Barbara, a hippieish artist who wants to party with the kids. The novel is both nostalgic for and clear-eyed about the time and place, depicting both the freedom that teens had back then, and the many ways that these neglectful parents and predatory teachers damaged their kids. This is an ambitious novel, and it takes on several big themes, but it also moves quickly through this year in these characters' lives. I was a teen in the early Eighties, and I loved revisiting this time in the novel and thinking about how much has changed for high-school kids, and how much hasn't changed. I'd also add that if you're a fan of Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep or Whit Stillman's movie Metropolitan, this is the novel for you.

Age of Consent by new author Amanda Brainerd tells the story of three privileged teenagers in the 1980s, struggling to find their place in the world. What is striking is the compassion the author has for the girls---it would be easy to look down on them, but the author never takes the easy route. She fully inhabits them and through their eyes, the reader can see how their choices make sense to them in the moment. The reader is forced to confront all the ways that the adults have abandoned (or worse) these girls. They do the best they can, but no one is there to protect them--and then never quite get what they need. The book is well-written, moves quickly and is gripping. (I wound up putting off other things I had to do in order to finish it). Don't be fooled by the summary (I wouldn't have thought I would care so much about reading about the world of fancy private schools in the 1980s). This book is about so much more than that--about how hard it is to grow up, the responsibility that adults have towards teens, and people's desperate need to connect. I can't wait to read what Ms. Brainerd writes next!

This book started out so promising, with well drawn characters and an interesting premise. But then it devolved into an insipid uninspired YA novel. And unrealistic. Everyone uses archaic expressions, like "hush!" I mean no teens I knew spoke like these teens back in the 80s. And the adults were caricatures.Got very bored and couldnt finish the book. But 3 stars for author's language skills and potential. Hope to read more from her in the future, something for adult readers.

Brainerd’s Age of Consent is my favorite summer read this year. Overprivileged teenagers in Manhattan and outposts fend for themselves in the unmoored 1980s, neglected by parents too focused on their own lives and parties and vices to notice—let alone attend to—the emotional needs of their children. One of many indelible scenes involves the mother of a sensitive boy who knows that the kids aren’t all right: driving to East Hampton at night, the mother, a bohemian salon-holding painter at the top of the art market, needs a cocaine rush to stay awake at the wheel. Without hitting the brakes, she snorts the drug her son’s coolheaded girlfriend holds to her nose. Funny, smart, surprisingly sympathetic, with a great soundtrack!

Age of Consent follows the trajectory of three girls on the cusp of adulthood over the course of a school year and vacation. The setting is wealthy Manhattan and the playgrounds of the privileged but at the heart of the novel lie questions of female empowerment and friendship, sexual awakening and the navigation of potentially predatory relationships. A fast-paced tour de force that, once started, you will not wish to put down.