Throwaway Girls

At 17, Caroline Lawson is enduring her last few months of senior year at an exclusive prep school, impatient for graduation and a chance to escape her controlling parents. Then her best friend, Madison, disappears. When the police try to pin the disappearance on Caroline’s favourite teacher, Caroline risks everything to figure out what really happened. But Madison isn’t the only girl who has gone missing, and the deeper Caroline digs, the darker the secrets she uncovers, her own included.

Andrea Contos’s debut novel, Throwaway Girls, is not only a dark, complex and suspenseful mystery; it also explores important issues with depth and sympathy. Caroline is bisexual, and though her friends hardly shrug at her sexual orientation, her mother refuses to accept her daughter. Her parent’s response to Caroline’s “coming out” was to send her to “conversion camp” where Caroline was trapped until she escaped, injured and betrayed. In the two years since then, Caroline has withdrawn into aloof secrecy until she can leave home.

The novel also looks unflinchingly at privilege and social class. When Caroline finds her first love, Willa, in social circles in which she would normally never move, she becomes aware of a deeply unjust double standard. St Francis Preparatory School, where Caroline and her friends are groomed for success, is its own little world. Until she breaks free of that world, Caroline never sees its privileged narrowness: “It’s like walking a tightrope — it only works if you don’t look down.” When she discovers that the disappearance of at least three other girls has never been properly investigated, Caroline is determined to show that the lives of these “throwaway girls” mattered. Madison is too important to ignore, but the police seem determined to prove their assumptions and ignore Caroline’s evidence.

Caroline’s investigation is driven partly by guilt. Swept up in first the joy of finding love and then the despair of losing it, Caroline ignored Madison’s distress. Her classmate and reluctant investigator, Jake Monaghan, fights his own guilt and loyalties in discovering the truth through the layers of corruption. When the plot races to a heart-pounding climax, both teens must look unflinchingly at the cruelty of the life they have always lived.

Throwaway Girls is written with great attention to language. Metaphors and vivid imagery evoke a vibrant picture of the two sides of Caroline’s world. Scenes of passion are detailed but sensitively drawn, and Caroline’s inner torment is clear. The narrative structure is also interesting, if at times confusing. Chapters begin in media res and only gradually reveal a backstory to link with previous action. This departure from a linear narrative is sometimes disorienting, keeping the reader off balance. Occasionally it interferes with narrative momentum, but the fragmentary revelations reflect the gradual awareness of the shocking truth. Curious shifts in voice and point of view add to the mystery. An unnamed first-person voice gives a different perspective, and it is not until well into the novel that readers understand the speaker’s identity. While these narrative shifts and occasionally overly descriptive prose may be confusing for some readers, the effect is compelling.

In Throwaway Girls, Cantos has used intense language to create a tough, courageous heroine and a gripping mystery that pulls no punches.