All Girls

All Girls, by Emily Layden, is an ensemble novel set in a girls boarding school in Connecticut. It’s more a series of interesting vignettes over an academic year than a plot with a resolution. The girls’ varied experiences touch many topics — sexual consent, stereotypes, classism, power dynamics, racism, abuse, gender presentation, and more. Too many, perhaps, because the book never quite draws a conclusion or makes a statement.

Most of the scenes were girls at a turning point or realization, with insightful characterizations and descriptions, but we rarely see the consequences of these moments. Instead, it’s on to another character, creating an interesting ramble through private-school adolescence, but with way too many characters to keep straight. I liked how the young women’s experiences were taken seriously and their emotions were valued throughout the book. Many of the vignettes relate to sexual consent or men “getting a little weird” as one of the alums describes it, including  a whisper network of which classes to avoid, but it never really formed a narrative or led to a conclusion. 

I was very interested while I was reading, but I realized at the end of the book that I’d been waiting for the meandering stories to coalesce into something more, and it never quite did.