The Year of Needy Girls by Patricia A. Smith

This is a tale of a modern-day witch hunt and, simultaneously, an accurate portrayal of lives that intersect the fortunes of fancy private New England schools. Unfortunately, its subject matter is also ripped directly from today's headlines, as the experiences Laura Kipnis relays in her fascinating article "Eyewitness to a Title IX Witch Trial" in the 2 April issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, and that she addresses in more depth in her book Unwanted Advances, make us painfully aware.  While acknowledging that there is no doubt that sexual assault on
campuses across the country is a very serious issue, particularly for survivors of such abuse, the book details how even an unsubstantiated accusation can completely devastate a life, both
externally in terms of loss of respect of family, friends, students, and colleagues, not to mention loss of career prospects and income, and internally in terms of sowing self-doubt.
​

With its fictionalized consideration of such a pertinent and weighty issue, I found this book a very interesting read. Nevertheless, to say that I enjoyed it would be an overstatement. It moved along at a good pace, and both the internal thoughts of its main character and the action sequences were gripping. But while I recognize that the main relationship under scrutiny here was the possibly-abusive one, I found the adult relationships in the story insufficiently developed. In particular, the main character's intimate relationship, which I think the author intended to provide an important counterpoint to the possibly-abusive one, seemed hollow. I also found the main character's partner's deep and instant affinity for the man who would undeniably perpetrate abduction, sex crimes, and murder insufficiently explained. Furthermore, I didn't understand why some of the students' parents harbored such disdain for the main character or why the new woman to the community made such an effort to support her. I would have found the book much stronger if these relationships had been more developed and made to make more intellectual and/or emotional sense.

Another issue for me is that the book wrapped up too quickly and superficially and neatly for my taste. This was the case both with respect to the possible abuse, and with respect to the parallel story line of the abduction, confirmed sexual abuse, and murder of a local boy from the wrong side of the tracks. After all the angst and drama and brouhaha, everything just wraps up very nicely and suddenly. Was there a reason for that, or did the author just run out of steam? The idea underlying the book is such a good one, and the juxtaposition of the two stories so apt, that, overall, I guess I just expected the aspects of the book that were not directly related to school sexual abuse to be handled more deftly, deeply, and believably than they were.

--Patricia Johann
Regular contributor & ASU professor