The Girls from Corona del Mar

Friendships between girls can be intense. And in the case of Mia and Lorrie Ann, there is no question that this is true. The Girls from Corona del Mar by Rufi Thorpe, tells the story of Mia and Lor, as they grow from young girls to women, and the journey is filled with sun tans and lemon juice, giggling, and trips to the mall. But it's also filled with heartbreak and conflict, growing pains and despair.

Mia and Lorrie Ann live in the California town of Corona del Mar. They are lifelong friends, who are total opposites. Mia is the “bad girl”, living in a dysfunction family with a Mother that drinks heavily, and two brothers who she practically raises. She is “heartless” and yet honest. Lorrie Ann is beautiful and kind, almost show more angelic in her goodness, with a close knit family that seems plucked out of a fairytale to all who observe them. But when tragedy strikes Lorrie Ann her life seems to tumble out of control, with one thing leading to another, Mia trying all along to make it all better Lor, until finally Mia questions whether she really ever knew the real Lorrie Ann, and was she all that Mia made her out to be.

What did I think? The writing is so compelling. Once I started reading the first pages, I could not put it down. The story is told in Mia’s voice, and it is so real. The intense feelings best friends have for one another, the loyalty, the disappointments, the small betrayals, and the unfaltering support after all is said and done, all translate on the pages beautifully. The story is filled with a whirlwind of emotions and thought provoking situations that make this an amazing feat of writing, and would make a wonderful book to discuss. I kept trying to imagine what I would do, what I could do in the situations the girls had to deal with. I felt such anguish at times because the story unknowingly wraps itself around you and makes you part of it.

Favorite Character? Mia was my favorite character, right from the start. And it seems to me, without letting out any spoilers here, that Mia was the better of the friends, almost always putting Lorrie Ann first in their lives, whereas Lorrie Ann lived off the kindness of others and Mia’s fierce loyalty. (When you read this book, and you should, let's talk about that aspect of friendships- the give and take, is it always equal?)

Love, loyalty, motherhood, is the right choice the same for everyone? Do we ignore the faults of our loved ones out of loyalty or because we want the world to be perfect outside of ourselves? Loss, tragedy, fear, how can we be true to ourselves when we don’t agree with the decisions of the ones we love? And how do we reconcile that within ourselves? The Girls from Corona del Mar is beautiful, intense, and paints a portrait of two young girls learning to become the women they were meant to be, and be the friends they thought they should be. show less

This was definitely one of my better picks this summer. Well written with sympathetic characters and a story that kept moving.

The book tells the story of two best friends, Lorrie Ann and Mia. In Mia's eyes Lorrie Ann or Lola, has it made. She comes from a close-knit, loving family, she's beautiful and good. Mia's own family life is more problematic and less happy. Mia herself is not a happy person.

The story follows them through their teen-aged years into adulthood. Their lives follow very different trajectories, with Mia escaping her hard-scrabble background, while Lola becomes pregnant before graduating from high school. I don't want to describe too much more, for fear of giving away plot points. I will say the novel is well written, show more and I especially appreciated the well-drawn characters. I felt I knew these women and understood the choices they made. Even when I didn't agree with them or thought they were bad choices.

The book is rather bleak in points, and the theme of bad things happening to good people is its cornerstone. It's also about the interplay of personal choices and happenstance. Things we control and things we have no control over and how these influence our lives and the evolution of friendship. show less

I'm impressed by the weight of the novel, even though reading it was a breeze. Thorpe's story of two childhood friends on diverging paths is at times overwhelming heartbreaking, but always honest. The exploration of outside perceptions of one's self and the reality of self is fascinating. I feel like the ending was happy enough, so the book is not too depressing despite some of the darker plot turns.

While I enjoyed the quality of the writing, the assuredness of the storytelling, and the depths of the character development, I didn't really care for the story arc, and found most of the characters to be self-absorbed, petulant, and often unlikeable. In too many places, this felt like a screed on abortion, painting complex issues with judgemental moralism, rather than empathy.

This is a sad narrative of two best friends, one of whose life post-adolescence becomes a nightmare and one who cannot rescue the other. It's like a "how low can you go" contest that includes abortions and a horribly handled birth, plus drug addiction. Mia is the more reliable narrator as she explains her obsession with the physically perfect Lorrie Ann. It's a sad dance with no real winners and no real goal but survival.

I can't recall the last book I read about friendship about 2 girls/women. It starts out when Mia and Lorrie Ann are in high school and Mia thinks Lorrie Ann's life is perfect.

Sometimes it's told in the first person by Mia years later after she graduated from Yale and had her Ph.D and living in Istanbul. She was reminiscing back to high school when she got an abortion and Lorrie Ann was deciding to have one or get married to her boyfriend. She decided the right thing to do was get married. As it sometimes happens, they drifted apart when Mia got into Yale. Then they reconnected and Lorrie Ann's life was in turmoil, after she married Jim (her boyfriend). He died in the Army, and Lorrie Ann had a boy with severe CP. Things happen quickly show more in this book and Lorrie Ann's life was not a happy one. She ended up coming to Istabul where Mia was working and living with her boyfriend, and told her what happened with Zach and how she and Aman, her neighbor, in CA, traveled to India.

It's a complicated relationship between Mia and Lorrie Ann over the years. They come together, get along, and then they lose track of each other years later, and Mia finds out from Lorrie Ann's mother 3 years later, that she's singing in a Christian band, like her late father, and living in Iceland. Mia gets married to Franklin, has a baby boy and visits Zach in the nursing home, and finds out that Lorrie Ann, had no contact with him at all which really saddened me but glad that Mia did when she could. It's a sad ending and sort of sad that Mia and Lorrie Ann fell out of touch, thanks to Lorrie Ann, but not Mia who always wanted to keep in touch. I mean they were best friends for years. show less

It lost a star only because of the part of the book that, in my opinion, seems to look down on any woman who is not a mother. Other than that, I loved it...beautiful writing and beautiful, deeply flawed, realistic characters. It is dark and rather depressing; I wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for a light read.