The House On R. Street

A teen girl dominates her dysfunctional family and escapes her home life through cinema visits and a sexual awakening in this psychological novel. In 1920s South Africa, Bill is the wild child of her family. Coddled by her mother, feared by her sisters, she does as she pleases. Skipping school to see the same movie time and again, enticing lonely men with her budding sexuality, Bill fulfills her reckless, selfish fantasies while her family disintegrates around her. A recluse afflicted with chronic pain and spiraling melancholy, Bill's mother spends most of her time bedridden under the medicinal care of doctors. Her father's once-successful diamond business has fallen on hard times. Her sisters struggle with their own adolescent problems, even as Bill embraces her own. Then an impulsive act to supposedly ease her mother's suffering threatens everything Bill's family has left . . . Violence takes the stunning, explicit form of psychosexual bondage . . . Lush and opaquely eerie. —The New York Times Book Review