Innocence

In her electrifying follow-up to the acclaimed bestseller, I Was Amelia Earhart, Jane Mendelsohn delivers a modern gothic coming-of-age story, a devastating X-ray of American culture, and a piercing, playful, and poetic exploration of the inner life of a teenage girl growing up in New York City.“Innocence is a kind of Rosemary's Baby channeled through J.D. Salinger.” —Dennis Cooper, Village Voice

“Remarkable…A truly thrilling read.” —Newsday

“Borrowing classic ingredients from the genres of horror films and popular literature, Mendelsohn has concocted a coming-of-age tale about a Manhattan girl’s adolescence; this is a story of innocence, all right, but that nebulous concept today means finding your way in a media-saturated, sometimes dangerous culture.” —Boston Sunday Globe

“It's a graceful, delusionary teenage thriller unusually in touch with young characters' emotional workings, and, at the same time, a book by someone who clearly understands the tricks that make Stephen King's pages turn. In the novel, a teenaged girl named Beckett witnesses or imagines a series of murders and grows increasingly convinced that reality masks a demonic conspiracy by the adult world to destroy her innocence and corrupt everyone she trusts.” —Dennis Cooper, Village Voice

“Mendelohn is a smart, clever writer who has created a…novel that rivets with well-paced scenes, lyrical prose, and moments of profound insight. By playing with the worst stereotypes about women and giving eloquent nod to her cinematic forebears, Mendelsohn gives voice and image to a new generation’s female howl.” —The Providence Sunday Journal

“This dark and gothically twisted novel from the author of I Was Amelia Earhart gives us the city as a wicked stepmother’s poisonous fruit, its beauty baneful, its sweetness deadly…Mendelsohn’s genius lies in her ability to keep both the fantastical and the ordinary in focus at the same time…a brilliant balancing act.” —Newsday

Jane Mendelsohn's first novel, I Was Amelia Earhart, spent fourteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was published in fifteen languages.