The year is 2005; in Gabrielle Korn’s new novel, Long Island Girls, Susan and Katie are high school best friends. After graduation, both young women flee Long Island to live in New York City, and the novel traces their lives until their middle-aged years, set in the present day. Readers witness Susan’s feisty coming-of-age, from coming out at seventeen through her early life in New York working at an indie record label. Susan’s story highlights the value of community, whether built around queer identities or music subcultures.
Long Island Girls is also a tribute to a lost indie music scene, and musician Tegan Quin calls it “a nostalgic mixtape.” The book delves deep into the idea of nostalgia: “We continue to love that same awful old music, not because of what the music is but because it reminds us of how we used to feel when we listened to it.” However, Long Island Girls is more than a nostalgic romp, more than a bildungsroman; once the action unfurls, a compelling plot line about the #MeToo movement emerges as Korn’s characters grapple with and critique the sexualized educational, work, and social environments that women encounter throughout their lives.
Korn’s deft plotting in Long Island Girls braids disparate events together that propel the narrative, but the novel truly shines through the intimacy shown among its characters. Questions of marriage, convention, and how to build a life outside of patriarchal standards impact the full cast of characters, and each individual story offers a different vision for friendship and intimacy and how one can build a life outside heterosexual patriarchy.
Korn’s commitment to creating original and quirky characters allows her to address significant, contemporary issues throughout the novel; Long Island Girls explores class and art within a gentrified New York City that creates an honest and intimate portrayal of the lesbian dating world, and examines various aspects of Jewish life.
In the end, the friendship between Susan and Katie is the gift of Long Island Girls. In all the ways that matter, this is a novel about friendship: its meaning, its challenges, its endurance.
Julie R. Enszer is the author of four poetry collections, including Avowed, and the editor of OutWrite: The Speeches that Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture, Fire-Rimmed Eden: Selected Poems by Lynn Lonidier, The Complete Works of Pat Parker, and Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974 – 1989. Enszer edits and publishes Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.
