“Growing Up Girl: Untethered” by Caroline S Fairless has been released worldwide. This 344-page novel, the first in the Growing Up Girl Trilogy, follows Bernadette Aller as she hires a ghostwriter to help tell her story. An eccentric, nearly seventy-year-old woman steeped in offbeat habits and fanciful thoughts, Bernadette’s understanding of her life doesn’t always align with what’s considered normal. As ghostwriter Scully Trippe (who goes by Trippe) tries to make sense of Bernadette’s unconventional behavior and unpredictable stories, a clear image of her idiosyncratic employer begins to emerge.
Written with vividly descriptive language and a tone that embodies Bernadette’s unusual personality and perspective, the novel immediately draws readers into a rich character study, revealing truths about the protagonist’s past through the eyes of her ghostwriter. Trippe soon comes to understand that her job includes preventing Bernadette from going off the rails – not an easy task for someone who insists she is connected to a ghost and a time traveler.
Experimenting with form and reflecting Bernadette’s psyche, author Caroline S Fairless takes a nonlinear approach to the events of both the novel and the story of Bernadette’s life within it, offering asides from Trippe’s point of view to provide context and counterpoint to her subject’s claims.
BernadetteWorld, as Trippe comes to describe it, is a place of whimsical interpretation and often misremembered events – and yet, Bernadette’s story is also riddled with unspeakable trauma and the desire to face it with honesty. Driven by her work as a writer, sculptor, and artist, Bernadette’s response to Trippe’s occasional and gentle challenge to her memory or a sequence of events is simply a hand gesture of dismissal, “it’s just another way of knowing, that’s all.”
Bernadette understands that the line separating the dualistic concept of imagined and real is blurred, that her imaginary world is as reliable a marker as factuality in imbuing her life with meaning. How she tells her story is what matters, and she gets to tell it the way she wants to.
As the story unfolds – both Bernadette’s history and the tale of capturing it – readers see new sides of the main character, from her extraordinary resilience to the ways her life and mind inspire hope for infinite possibilities. In creating this incredible character, Fairless invites contemplation about the meaning of storytelling and what it means to reflect on the past.
This delightful novel is an exploration of time, memory, and the subjectivity of reality told through a truly unique character and the fascinating lessons she imparts. From an expanded importance of community to the interconnectedness of all beings, the power of hope to the limitless potential hidden beneath the surface of perception, Bernadette’s quirky wisdom reveals new ways of seeing the world.
Growing Up Girl: Untethered (ISBN: 9781963844368) can be purchased through retailers worldwide, including Barnes & Noble and Amazon. The paperback retails for $19.99, and the ebook retails for $2.99. Review copies and interviews are available upon request.
Learn more at: https://carolinefairless.com/
From the back cover:
In Growing Up Girl: Book One, a young Bernadette Aller floats through her life – job to job, lover to lover, place to place. She is an untethered spirit trying to find her way in a world that’s not been too kind.
Now, as she barrels toward her seventies, she wants to tell her story, not because it’s hers alone, but because it’s a surprisingly common story. It’s a story much of which happens behind closed doors that display the word unspeakable. Bernadette hires Scully Trippe to ghost write, translating Bernadette’s personal experience into the third person, in what might (or might not) be a misguided attempt to extend the story’s reach.
The time frame is malleable, with the storytelling moving back and forth through several stages of Bernadette’s life.
In this first book of the Growing Up Girl trilogy, BernadetteWorld is populated with Patience, her housekeeper; Maddie, a former lover and now a ghost; and Lucinda, a time traveler who drops in and out. It’s a quirky group.
About the author:
Caroline Fairless is a writer and ceramic sculptor. She is a retreat facilitator with a focus on the interdependence and connectedness of every being, visible or not. She served several congregations as an ordained pastor for twenty-five years, publishing several books during that time. Now in her retirement, Caroline is writing fiction and learning new art forms. In the New Hampshire summers, she gardens and walks the dogs she and her partner have rescued. New Hampshire winters find her at her computer, still walking dogs and camping in front of the wood stove.
About Manhattan Book Group:
Manhattan Book Group (“MBG”), located on Broadway in New York City, is a registered trade name of Mindstir Media LLC. MBG is widely known as a premier hybrid book publisher. We have combined the best of traditional publishing with the best of self- publishing to provide authors with the “best of both worlds” in a sense. To learn more about MBG, visit https://www.manhattanbookgroup.com/
Media ContactCompany Name: Manhattan Book GroupContact Person: Jen McNabneyEmail: Send EmailPhone: 212-634-7677Address:447 Broadway 2nd Floor #354City: New YorkState: New YorkCountry: United StatesWebsite: https://www.manhattanbookgroup.com/
