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Summary
Summary
Vere, Gwen, Ginny, and Win come to The Sisters of the Supreme Adoration by different paths, delivered into the rigorous and austere care of Sister Fran. Each has their own complicated, heartbreaking story that they safeguard. But together they are the all powerful and confident The Guineveres, bound by the extraordinary coincidence of their names and girded against the indignities of their plain, sequestered lives. Together, they learn about God, history, and, despite the nuns' protestations, sex. They learn about the saints whose revival stories of faith and pain are threaded through their own. But above all, they plot their futures, when they can leave the convent and finally find a true home. But when four comatose soldiers, casualties of the War looming outside, arrive at the convent, The Guineveres' friendship is tested in ways they never could have foreseen. In The Guineveres, Sarah Domet navigates the wonder and tumult of girlhood, the families we yearn for and create. In prose shot through with beauty, Domet intertwines the ordinary and the miraculous, as The Guineveres discover what home really means.
Author Notes
Sarah Domet lives in Savannah, Georgia. The Guineveres is her first novel.
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
Four teenagers, each named Guinevere, find themselves under the strict guidance of the nuns at Our Lady of Perpetual Adoration. Although they share a common name, Gwen, Ginny, Win, and Vere all have different and equally heartbreaking reasons for coming to live at the convent. The girls are guided by the dogmatic and controlling Sister Fran and the spiritually inept Father James. Sent to the convent's convalescent wing as punishment, the young women must take care of five unidentified and comatose soldiers. When one of the soldiers awakens and another girl is sent home with him to help with his recovery, each friend imagines a future with "her" soldier outside the constraints of the religious community. The Guineveres (as the girls call themselves) navigate the liminal spaces between childhood and adulthood, and faith and skepticism through the lens of broken families and intense friendships. Although those used to quick beach reads might find the pace slow, Domet's debut will lure readers in with well-developed characters, rich language, and small miracles. VERDICT Recommended for students who are looking for weighty romance novels.-Krystina Kelley, Belle Valley School, Belleville, IL © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Four girls named Guinevere, "a coincidence that bound us together from the moment we met," arrive within two years of one another at the Sisters of the Supreme Adoration convent, in Domet's debut novel. The story is narrated by Vere, looking back to when she "was a sensitive young girl, a girl who still had faith," but Vere sees her own story as so bound up with the other Guineveres, she commonly uses the first-person plural. There is Ginny, "a delicate creature"; Winnie, funny and down to earth; and Gwen, the last to arrive and the most worldly of the four, a pretty girl who longs to get out, who devises a plan for them to escape through a hollowed-out float during the convent's annual festival. The Guineveres' punishment for their failed escape is three months of service in the convent's convalescent ward, to "reawaken [their] sense of gratitude," in the words of Father James. When a group of comatose and unidentified soldiers, severely injured in a foreign war, are brought in, the Guineveres develop a joint fantasy that the boys will wake and the girls will get to return home with them. Domet's concept is strong, an homage to The Virgin Suicides with its group narration and fixation on trapped teenage girls. Though the story is a bit too long, Domet deftly weaves in the girls' individual stories and the stories of female saints into her structure, making this a satisfying read on multiple levels. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
Four girls, each named -Guinevere and each with her own secret, heart-wrenching story, are abandoned at an austere convent. Ginny, Gwen, Win, and Vere call themselves The Guineveres. While they share a name, they are very different. Artist Ginny, Hollywood hopeful Gwen, seemingly stoic Win, and nurturing Vere form a tight bond. When four unconscious soldiers arrive at the convent with war injuries, each Guinevere chooses to watch over a boy, with unforeseeable consequences. Following the church seasons and its ageless rituals, each protagonist's story of abandonment is juxtaposed with tales of defiant Catholic female saints who experienced extreme suffering. In these adolescents' cloistered existence, life is spare and difficult. These graphic stories of the saints support the theme that there are infinite ways to experience pain and loss, and this has been true throughout time. With polished prose, Domet (90 Days to Your Novel) offers an unsettling, melancholy first novel whose tone echoes that of Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides. VERDICT This phenomenal, character-driven story is mesmerizing, with just a glimmer of hope that good can emerge from the most troublesome situations. [See Prepub Alert, 4/3/16.]-Gloria Drake, Oswego P.L. Dist., IL © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.