The Terrible Girls

The girls on the prowl in The Terrible Girls are indeed terrible--relentless in love, ruthless in betrayal. These thematically linked stories depict a contemporary Gothic world in which body parts are traded for love, wounds never heal, and self-sacrifice is often the only way out.

In this brilliantly original work, Rebecca Brown gives us haunting parables of betrayal and love, of loss and resurrection, of loneliness and solidarity. Like a modern Djuna Barnes, Brown creates a language of telling that is fiercely beautiful and honest. This book is a love story unlike any you have read before. Its subversive and passionate transformation carry the lesbian literary voice onto the 21st century.--Joan Nestle

A dry, witty, graceful--if savage--gift.--Mary Gaitskill

The Terrible Girls comes from one of the fiercest, most potent, original writers around: a bloody flayer of skins, both other's and her own . . . a work of possessed and persuasive visionary power.--The Listener

The Terrible Girls is a powerful account of erotic love which exchanges the comforts of illusion for more complex and less certain rewards.--The Times Literary Supplement

Rebecca Brown is the winner of the 2003 Washington State Book Award. Her books, which are all published by City Lights, include: The Haunted House, The Terrible Girls, The End of Youth, The Last Time I Saw You, The Dogs and Annie Oakley's Girl. She was awarded a Genius Award and grant from Seattle's weekly magazine, The Stranger.

Rebecca Brown is the author of a dozen books of prose including The Last Time I Saw You, The End of Youth, The Dogs, The Terrible Girls (City Lights) and The Gifts of the Body (HarperCollins). She recently co-edited, with Mary Jane Knecht, an anthology of writers' responses to work at the Frye Art Museum.