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What Has Become of You follows Vera Lundy, an aspiring crime writer and master of self-deprecation who, like many adults, has survived adolescence but hasn't entirely overcome it. When she agrees to fill in for a private school English teacher on maternity leave, teaching The Catcher in the Rye to privileged girls, Vera feels in over her head. The students are on edge, too, due to the recent murder of a local girl close to their age.
Enter Jensen Willard. At fifteen she's already a gifted writer but also self-destructive and eerily reminiscent of Vera's younger self. As the two outcasts forge a tentative bond, a sense of menace enfolds their small New England town. When another student, new to the country, is imperiled by her beliefs, Vera finds herself in the vortex of danger - and suspicion.
With the threat of a killer at large, the disappearance of her increasingly worri-some pupil, and her own professional reputation at stake, Vera must thread her way among what is right by the law, by her students, and by herself. In this poignant page-turner, populated with beguiling characters and sharp social insights, coming-of-age can happen no matter how old you are.
"Starred Review. Watson's twisty plot speeds with page-turning momentum, but what's likely to stick with you are the complex characters...who are, by turns, vulnerable, flawed, and surprising, bravely struggling to rewrite the stories of their lives." - Publishers Weekly
"With a keen ear for the machinations of a teacher's mind, Watson (Asta in the Wings, 2009) deftly ratchets up the tension in this riveting game of cat and mouse." - Kirkus
"A precocious teenager. A teacher who can't quite grow up. What Has Become of You is a suspenseful and tightly plotted thriller, filled with vivid and memorable characters, each with her own compelling voice." – Alafair Burke, author of If You Were Here, Long Gone, and the Ellie Hatcher series
"Jan Elizabeth Watson, our poet of the macabre, has written a moving, page-turning, and ultimately terrifying account of a few months in a great teacher's life. I'll never trust a teenager again!" - Bill Roorbach, author of Life Among Giants and The Remedy for Love
"It takes a lot to creep me out - I spent my youth reading Stephen King under the covers - but Jan Elizabeth Watson has more than succeeded in this gripping literary thriller. Part gloss on The Catcher in the Rye, part millennial The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, What Has Become of You is that rare beast: a page-turner that asks dark, difficult questions about the state of contemporary American society." – Joanna Smith Rakoff, author of A Fortunate Age
"The power of What Has Become of You sneaks up on you, until you are turning the pages compulsively. Give yourself over to it. You're in the hands of an expert." –Rebecca Goldstein, author of The Mind-Body Problem and Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction
This information about What Has Become of You was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jan Elizabeth Watson is a writer who lives and teaches in Maine. A graduate of Columbia University's MFA program. her first novel, Asta in the Wings, was published by Tin House Books to critical acclaim in 2009. An Italian edition of the novel, Le Prigione di Neve, was published by Fazi Editore shortly thereafter. Her anticipated second novel, What Has Become of You, was published wordwide by Dutton in the spring of 2014.
She once rather famously described herself as being "one part Shaft, and two parts Emily Bronte." A fundamentally kindhearted and tender soul, she has been known to identify actors by their cause of death and checks out suspicious quantities of true crime books from her local library. She feeds stray cats and chases purse-snatchers, all while maintaining a ...
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