Aurelie Sheehan

History Lesson for Girls

"Subtle and moving."

"Poignant...Sheehan reminds her readers that heartbreak is a requisite part of growing up."

"This wistful, gentle novel has something surprisingly harsh to say about coming of age in a culture of self-indulgence and spiritual foolishness."

"Sheehan catches with consummate skill those perilous moments when girls gallop into the unknown territory of womanhood."

"The '70s witnessed a clash between bohemianism and the civil rights movement and the stalwart old guard, and no one describes it better than the young woman in Aurelie Sheehan's History Lesson for Girls."

"An intelligent, original coming-of-age novel from the author of The Anxiety of Everyday Objects (2004) and Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant (1994)...her language remains carefully off-kilter, gorgeously specific and shot through with unobtrusive wit. Lyrical, assured, heartbreaking."


"In her second novel, Sheehan juxtaposes small moments the way an artist uses colors, creating potency and meaning with immediate contrasts...A tender, unflinching, and distinctive view of how girls grow up."

"Aurelie Sheehan's funny, nimble, bright-eyed prose is far more honest than the fiction we call Western Civ. Relentless and relatable, History Lesson for Girls is the truest novel that I've found in ages. Read it. Now. By flashlight. In the prone position. If not solely to remember the place that you and I come from--the year before doubt, before sex, before adult injustice, all the raw deals we'll never understand and never really escape."

"Aurelie Sheehan perfectly captures the breath-catching intensity of those early friendships between young girls, when adults feel peripheral but aren't and everything hangs in the balance of large and small acts of love and betrayal. Beautifully written, History Lesson for Girls has a wonderful memory for the details of an era many of us will never forget.



The Anxiety of Everyday Objects
“Exudes charm at every pore. Even better, its stylish, breezy exterior belies unexpected emotional depth.”
"'All good secretaries will eventually find truth in the hearts of men.' So begins Aurelie Sheehan's first novel. Not love, but truth. There's a difference, and in such subtle shadings lie the considerable pleasures of The Anxiety of Everyday Objects, a book distinguished from its peers -- as its hero Winona Bartlett is distinguished from hers -- by a fragile but persistent joy."

"Sheehan is an exquisite writer."
“Deliciously wacky debut novel...hilarious, sly, sharply observed, and one of a kind--more please.”
"A high-spirited, entertaining, thoroughly satisfying novel."
"An honest, revelatory exploration of work, art, and identity."
"[A] hilarious and occasionally touching tale."
"An amusing and thoroughly entertaining first novel."
"The everyday is the exceptional in Aurelie Sheehan's The Anxiety of Everyday Objects, a bright, breezy, absorbing debut novel dappled with humor."
“But why only one cat?”

Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant
“Each paragraph is cinematic in its intensity, conveying angle by angle an uneasy tale of sexual liberties and repression.”
“With their surprising turns of phrase and conversational intimacy, these stories of women coping with society’s expectations of them invite the reader to enter into a perceptual conspiracy with their narrators. Take a ride with Sheehan, and you will look differently at the world.”
“Aurelie Sheehan renders a powerful female sexuality; the prose rushes forward, full of heat and instinct...Sheehan should be read and re-read.”
“Feminists and bored housewives take note: Sheehan’s inaugural volume makes Desperately Seeking Susan seem conservative and predictable.”
“An enormously important talent.”
“Dramatic collisions of images, swerving versions of what is called ‘the truth,’ and audacious shifts in tone make Aurelie Sheehan’s debut collection of stories something exhilarating to read, extraordinary to hold inside.”
“Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant is a marvelous introduction to Aurelie Sheehan’s musical, muscular prose. She writes about the explosive warfare between women and men with heartbreak and naughty delight.”