The Wrong Girl: A Novel

From the award-winning author of Anywhere but Here and Commitment comes a rich and deeply moving novel about an ambitious young journalist who agrees to take in her troubled cousin for one pivotal New York summer.

At twenty-five years old, our narrator understands nothing about the New York City housing market—only that she can’t afford it. Still, between her salary at a women’s magazine she hopes to quit, the freelance money she makes on the side, and long afternoons she spends tutoring her landlord’s granddaughter, she can almost make ends meet. From her pre-war apartment on West End Avenue, she begins to build a grownup life: hosting dinner parties until 2 in the morning, selling the occasional story to the Village Voice, going on dates with a serious lawyer she can only refer to as “Trusts and Estates.”

But when her Michigan cousin—a fifteen-year-old girl she barely knows—arrives on her doorstep for a two-week visit, she is suddenly thrust into the role of caretaker. Ellen is dangerously thin and seems to survive entirely on cigarettes. She takes over the bedroom and talks on the phone late into the night, she monopolizes the bathroom, smoking and putting on makeup. The two-week visit stretches to three, then four, and slowly our narrator begins to understand the true nature of Ellen’s
troubles. But family bonds are often fluid, and she soon finds herself powerless to change Ellen’s situation. As the years go by, she makes a choice that will alter both of their lives forever.  

A surprising, affecting novel that spans decades, The Wrong Girl, is a fascinating story of family and obligation, class and sexuality, ambition and identity from one of our most celebrated storytellers.