{"product_id":"the-brittanys-isbn-9780593311738","title":"The Brittanys","description":"\u003cb\u003eBursting with bittersweet nostalgia, a funny, poignant, perfectly voiced debut that captures what it's like to be a teenage girl—“full of brilliantly-rendered awkwardness and the hilarious minor horrors of a privileged adolescence, \u003ci\u003eThe Brittanys\u003c\/i\u003e shimmers with the everyday incandescence of youth” (Kimberly King Parsons, author of \u003ci\u003eBlack Light\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey're not the most popular freshmen at their Florida prep school, but at least everyone knows their name(s). \u003ci\u003eThe Brittanys.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrittany Rosenberg: drives her golf cart around her subdivision to meet boys.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrittany Gottlieb: insists you can't lose your virginity if you haven't gotten your period. (She \u003ci\u003eheard\u003c\/i\u003e it somewhere!)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrittany Tomassi: is from\u003ci\u003e New York\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrittany Jensen: once threw her tampon into a stranger's swimming pool. A brash, bold, unapologetic tomboy. And the greatest person in the whole wide world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt least as far as the fifth Brittany--our narrator--is concerned. Even within their friend group, she and Jensen are a duo: with their matching JanSport backpacks, Tiffany chokers, and Victoria's Secret push-up bras, they are unstoppable. And now that they're finally growing up, they're going to do everything: dye their hair, attend no-parent parties, try pot . . . maybe even lose their virginities. 2004 is totally going to be their year!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eExcept Jensen's interests may be diverging from her friends'. And within our narrator's own family--in the lives of her exhausted mother and beloved, genius older brother--life-changing events may be taking shape. Events that only years later, looking back, she has the perspective to see.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eA VINTAGE ORIGINAL“I’ve never read any book that captures so perfectly all the sweet and bitter and mess and tenderness and hard lessons in being fourteen. Nor the highly specific, totally unfakeable feeling of the year 2004. Brittany Ackerman must have kept the most detailed diary. Her voice in \u003ci\u003eThe Brittanys\u003c\/i\u003e, naive yet seeing all, looking both forward and backward, always figuring and looking for wisdom. I found every page of this book to be the perfect mix of entertaining, satisfying, questioning, and moving. It glows with Ackerman’s love for her characters. I could have stayed inside it forever.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Sarah Gerard, author of\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTrue Love\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A richly nostalgic portrait. . . . It is the poignant female relationships—between best friends and mothers and daughters—that reveal the story’s true soul. . . . Ackerman locates an achingly realistic but unsentimentally clear-eyed portrait of the youthful relationships that end but are never truly over. A raw, funny and bittersweet novel about the awkward tenderness of adolescence.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Alice Martin, \u003ci\u003eShelf Awareness\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A bittersweet, funny, and totally nostalgic foray into the minds of teenage girls and their secrets, betrayals, and dreams. . . . Ackerman nails it all. If you have ever been a teenage girl, you will instantly find yourself quaking in your imaginary Nikes, your fictional wrong-color JanSport weighing you down like an anvil. . . . If you’ve run out of episodes of \u003ci\u003ePen15\u003c\/i\u003e or can’t stand another binge-watch of \u003ci\u003eGossip Girl\u003c\/i\u003e, this is a perfect palate cleanser.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Rebecca Munro, \u003ci\u003eBookreporter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Brittanys\u003c\/i\u003e will take you right back to life in the early 2000s with Tiffany necklaces and Victoria's Secret everything. Can you say \u003ci\u003enostalgia\u003c\/i\u003e?!” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Elizabeth Ann Entenman, \u003ci\u003eHelloGiggles\u003c\/i\u003e, “The 10 Best New Books to Add to Your June Reading List”\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Some of my fondest summer memories are of hanging out aimlessly in my high school BFF’s basement and ‘discussing plans for the rest of our lives,’ as the narrator of \u003ci\u003eThe Brittanys\u003c\/i\u003e puts it—which is probably why I found this year-in-the-mind-of-a-fourteen-year-old-girl (in 2004, no less) to hit that summer-reading sweet spot. . . . The relationship between the narrator Brittany and Brittany Jensen is at the heart of things, and what a fickle, vulnerable, overflowing heart it is.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Eliza Smith, \u003ci\u003eLiterary Hub\u003c\/i\u003e, “38 Novels You Need to Read This Summer”\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The cult classic movie \u003ci\u003eHeathers\u003c\/i\u003e will come to mind. Set in an elite Florida prep school, the novel portrays what it’s like to be a teenage girl in a tight-knit group and what happens when one of them diverges from the flock.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Palm Beach Daily News\u003c\/i\u003e, \"2021 Summer Reading List\"\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Full of brilliantly-rendered awkwardness and the hilarious minor horrors of a privileged adolescence, \u003ci\u003eThe Brittanys\u003c\/i\u003e shimmers with the everyday incandescence of youth—car rides and homework, tampons and eyeliner, questionable fashion choices. Ackerman writes convincingly and empathetically about fourteen-year-old girls caught in that painful, exhilarating span of becoming. For anyone who has ever dyed their own hair, worn an absurd outfit, had a crush on someone ridiculous, or said the wrong thing—in other words, for anyone who was once a teenager—this book is for you.” \u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e—Kimberly King Parsons, author of \u003ci\u003eBlack Light\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The Brittanys. Teenage girls who really have everything: youth, beauty, swimming pools, and private school. And \u003ci\u003eso much pressure\u003c\/i\u003e. I read Brittany Ackerman’s page-turning debut novel \u003ci\u003eThe Brittanys\u003c\/i\u003e with my heart on my sleeve.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Marcy Dermansky, author of \u003ci\u003eVery Nice\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Honest, funny, and totally engrossing, \u003ci\u003eThe Brittanys\u003c\/i\u003e chronicles the freshman year of one of five Brittanys at a suburban prep school in the early 2000s. Author Brittany Ackerman’s most impressive feat is transforming the unspectacular, everyday events and humiliations of teenagehood into a fascinating and heartfelt narrative. Somehow, she’s captured that special blend of nostalgia and cringe that you can otherwise only find by flipping through a high school yearbook.” \u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eMaria Adelmann, author of \u003ci\u003eGirls of a Certain Age\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Sharply detailed but hauntingly universal, \u003ci\u003eThe Brittanys\u003c\/i\u003e encapsulates a moment in time for those who have lived it and introduces those who haven’t to an entire world underneath the carefully manicured surface of suburban teenage girlhood. The details Ackerman chooses to leave out are just as important and telling as the ones her narrator obsesses over, creating an achingly solipsistic narrative. Ackerman deftly captures that exquisite contradiction of female adolescence, the simultaneous yearning both to stand out and to disappear.” \u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eEleanor Kriseman, author of\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Blurry Years\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eBRITTANY ACKERMAN's debut essay collection, \u003ci\u003eThe Perpetual Motion Machine\u003c\/i\u003e, was the winner of Red Hen Press's Nonfiction Award. She has a creative writing MFA from Florida Atlantic University, and has attended the Writing by Writers Methow Valley Workshop and the Mont Blanc Workshop in Chamonix, France, as well as a residency at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods. \u003ci\u003eThe Brittanys\u003c\/i\u003e is her first novel.9780593311738|excerpt\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAckerman \/ THE BRITTANYS\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• ONE •\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrittany Rosenberg’s lost her purse. She’s laughing, though, not crying, even though her pink Coach bag could be floating around the fairgrounds, where teenagers are paid to dress up like zombies and pop out from behind maze walls. This is the ticket. We want to be scared. We begged our parents to let us go. We’ve paid for this, folded-­up twenty-­dollar bills in our little plush wallets. This is the kind of occasion we wear jeans to, tight Brazilian jeans decorated with holes and embroidery that lace all the way up the thigh, with a nice top, our hair straightened by our regulation flat irons. We can never get the back straight, and there’s always one lumpy wave from the crown of our heads to the base of our necks. In pictures, it appears as though we are wearing hats made of our own hair.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere are five Brittanys in the group: Brittany Rosenberg, Brittany Jensen, Brittany Gottlieb, Brittany Tomassi, and me. There is also a Mackenzie Bedner, aka Kenzie, and a Leigh Cotner, but we just call her Leigh. The seven of us: linked together, traversing the darkness of the fairgrounds filled with haunted houses for the month of October. It’s eighty degrees in Florida, even though it’s fall. Winds are strong, the telltale sign of a storm approaching, but we persist. Brittany Jensen’s parents lead us around, chaperones, and tell us to hold on to our things. Our hair blows into our lip gloss, and our bare arms dampen in the ever-­present humidity. I’m the only one who brought a zip-­up hoodie, and I’ve loaned it to Jensen, who wears it unzipped and loose around her shoulders, pointless.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Brittany Rosenberg screams, “My Coach purse! Where is it?” Jensen’s parents immediately identify the nearest attendant, a ponytailed teen in bloody face paint sporting a straw hat and wielding a flashlight. He looks for the purse on his hands and knees while we all laugh, because he’s kind of cute.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What color is it?” he asks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What’s your name?” Kenzie, the slutty one, asks back. She was the first of us to get felt up: in the seventh grade, at Adam Leibowitz’s bar mitzvah. She’s also the only one who doesn’t stuff or wear a padded bra, because she actually has boobs somehow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe ponytailed attendant shoots Kenzie a smile, and Brittany Gottlieb, the know-­it-­all, wants to know, “What was in the bag, anyway?” To which Rosenberg replies, “My permit! I just got it two weeks ago! And some tampons and my Hard Candy lip gloss. Oh, and fifty dollars for tonight.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrittany Tomassi gets on all fours, too, says, “We’ll find it, don’t worry!” Leigh twirls Rosenberg’s long black hair into one big knot, then lets it loose on her baby-­blue tank top, an attempt to comfort her, I guess.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrittany Jensen, my best friend out of all the best friends, butt-­bumps me and turns me around to the Ferris wheel. When we were twelve, we rode one together at her church’s annual fair. Without speaking, we grabbed each other’s arms and thought to ourselves, I hope we stop at the top, I hope we stop at the top. We closed our eyes and hoped so hard, and when we felt the car shudder to a halt we opened our eyes and saw we were right smack-­dab at the apex. It was then we knew we were magic—witches, fairies, whatever you want to call it—and we could do it, make things happen just by thinking.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor the last two years, we’ve used this power at school to get the fire alarm to go off or to get hundreds on our social studies tests. Now we are fourteen, it’s two weeks before the real Hal­loween, and we know we can find Brittany Rosenberg’s purse if we use the magic. We turn away from the group, and I grab Jensen’s arm as she grabs mine. We think, we hope, we drown out the loud music and flashing lights. We concentrate on that pink purse. We focus on Brittany Rosenberg’s face, her blue eyes, her black hair frizzing up in the humidity, her pale, flat tummy showing from underneath her top, her wedged sandals, her shiny, glossy lips.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I found it!” the ponytailed guy calls to our group. We run and see he’s actually found her bag, the pink Coach purse with interlocking Cs all over it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKenzie writes her phone number on a used gum wrapper, using Leigh’s bony back as a flat surface to compose the note. She hands it to him, and he asks, “How old are you, anyway?” and she says, “Sixteen,” and he walks away, laughing at the obvious lie. He ended up calling her the next weekend, and she gave him a blow job in his truck. I remember how she didn’t want any of us to know except Leigh, but then Leigh ended up telling everyone dur­ing an eating-­disorder-­themed assembly. It’s ironic, because Jensen always thought Kenzie might really have an eating disorder since she always went to the bathroom right after lunch and her teeth were kind of yellow. But I remember Leigh, how she kept giggling while some blonde teenage girl who must have weighed all of eighty pounds told us about how she’d overcome her friend ED, which stood for “eating disorder,” and how ED would always be in her life, like a true friend, but how he could never hurt her again like he had in middle school. Leigh kept laughing until Rosenberg made her say what was so funny. Finally, Kenzie told us. She said his “thing” tasted like nothing but his “stuff” tasted like crushed-­up SweeTarts. SweeTarts—­that’s why Leigh couldn’t keep it together. For the rest of the year, whenever someone brought them up, we all lost it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRosenberg reunites with her purse and checks inside for all her belongings. She reapplies her lip gloss, and it makes her mouth bright pink.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“You smell like a cinnamon bun,” Jensen tells her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“It’s Creamsicle,” Rosenberg says, and I remember debating between that shade and one called Confection, which I ended up getting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOur group migrates to the snack stand, and Brittany Jensen and I split a blooming onion, dipping the fried strips into the ranch in the middle. Brittany Gottlieb wants to share, but we’re adamant that no one gets involved except us. Jensen’s parents also buy us two Cokes, and we feel like we own the place because we’re the ones with the big cups of Coke, the snack and refreshments, the matching Guess watches. She has a lime-­green Kate Spade, and I have a small, classic Burberry bag. My mom gave me the twenty-­dollar bill that I folded and ended up not needing because Jensen’s parents paid for me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe look forward to Fright Nights every year. Usually, the fairgrounds are home to the Expo Center, which hosts concerts and conventions, but it is mainly known for the South Florida Fair. You can eat a burrito made out of cotton candy, you can pet an emu and have it nip at your fingers, you can win a stuffed bear the size of an armchair. But we much prefer the place at night, when the moonlight makes us appear older than we actually are and we become unafraid of the things that are supposed to scare us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe do a few haunted houses, scream and laugh so hard our voices will be gone tomorrow. Tomassi and Gottlieb sit these out: they don’t like the fake chain saws and the way a guy dressed as a psychotic clown gets too close to their legs. The rest of us move through the houses, pushing Rosenberg up front, watching her buckle in fear, take every corner with a squeal, and eventually fall down onto the hay that covers the ground. Tomassi gets a Diet Coke and drinks it out of the bottle like a model. Rosenberg takes a sip and snorts so hard it comes out her nose. We take a group picture on Jensen’s digital camera. Kenzie keeps asking me for gum, but it’s my last piece. I break it in half, and Jensen slips her half into the pocket of her jeans.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt the end of the night, everyone is having a sleepover at Kenzie’s house, but I have to be somewhere in the morning, so it’s been arranged that Brittany Jensen’s parents will take me back to their place, where my parents will pick me up. No matter how late it is, I’ll call and they’ll come. I say bye to all my friends when Kenzie’s mom arrives in her Range Rover and all the girls pile in. Brittany Jensen is laughing at something that Brittany Tomassi said, and I worry I’m missing out. I feel good in the car, though. Jensen’s parents drive a white Mercedes-­Benz, “Old Mercy.” Ironic, because the car is brand-­new, but I think Jensen gets embarrassed by the money her parents have.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe back is spacious, and I put my purse on the open seat where Jensen sat before, earlier today, when her dad picked us up from school. He brought us Subway sandwiches with extra pickles and two half Sprite–­half Cokes. Up front, her mom calls my mom, and I hear them talking. Jensen’s mom says it’ll be forty-­five minutes or so, that it got a little crazy with all the girls around and then the whole mess about the bag, and something about how they’ll never do it again, they’ll never volunteer to be the chaperones.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI drift off while they drive, and I’m out by the time we get to the highway. I don’t think about the girls in Kenzie’s room teaching one another how to use eyeliner on the inside of their eyelids. I don’t think about how Brittany Gottlieb has her period and a boyfriend and I don’t even know what a “thing” looks like yet. All I’ve ever done is kiss a boy, and it’s only been for truth or dare, nothing real, nothing out of love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first time happened when I was at my friend Anika’s house for a birthday party in fifth grade. Her older cousin, whose name I don’t even remember, something boyish and proud like Nate or Jonah, was dared to kiss me on the trampoline. It was about to rain, and I heard the beginning of a drizzle drumming on the tight canvas below us. His lips were so big, like gummy worms, and he smelled like the inside of a tree. If my name comes up tonight, I hope Jensen will recall this story for everyone, because she was there that night and saw it all go down. I miss her. I smell her cucumber-­melon perfume on my arm. Maybe I could grab my own arm and hope, but she isn’t here with me to make the magic happen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen we pull into the driveway, I wake up and see my parents’ car already waiting. I take the stick of gum out of my purse, the one I broke in half for Jensen because we only had one. This way, we each got a piece. This way, we could share what we had.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303749243109,"sku":"NP9780593311738","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593311738.jpg?v=1767738541","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-brittanys-isbn-9780593311738","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}