Everything Must Go

Starred review from August 14, 2017
Vintage-fashion queen Flora Goldwasser falls hard and fast for her private-school tutor, photographer Elijah. After agreeing to do some modeling for him in some of her best 1950s outfits (always with her face concealed), she becomes an online fashion sensation as “Miss Tulip.” On a whim, Flora quits her exclusive New York City private school to attend the Quaker “upstate-New-York-hippie-school” where Elijah will be teaching the following year. But he doesn’t show up, and Flora is stuck at the Quare Academy, which promotes organic lifestyles and discourages “shell-speak” (comments about a person’s appearance). Flora struggles to retain her fashion edge in a world of “tattered tunics,” unshaven legs, and kale, and along the way manages to create her own brand of activism. Written through text messages, blog posts, letters, journal entries, and more, Davis’s smart and witty debut captures a girl’s changing attitude and gradual acclimation to a very different environment. Filled with vibrant characters, it balances gentle jabs at pop culture and self-righteousness with thought-provoking ideas about feminist ideals and human frailties. Ages 14–up. Agent: Miriam Altshuler, Defiore and Company.

Flora Goldwasser has traded her prep school for an alternative hippie boarding school because of a boy she expects to be there. Only that boy never shows. Narrator Brittany Pressley captures the one-note quality of first love and eventual disappointment that are conveyed in desperate letters from Flora to her sister. Pressley goes from fast paced and confident in tone as the boho-garbed Flora revels in her uniqueness to a more subdued and questioning lilt as she settles into her new school, where tunics and jeans are the norm. As Flora tells her story in letters, emails, and journal entries, Pressley portrays her consistently. She also does well with the airy delivery of a hippie teacher, the clipped aristocratic tones of Flora's mother, and the Valley Girl intonations of Flora's friends back home. A.L.C. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine