The Virgins

Published in 2013
281 pages

epub



Pamela Erens is the recipient of 2015 fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Wesleyan Writers Conference, and a 2014 fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her short fiction, reviews, and essays have appeared in a wide variety of literary, cultural, and mainstream publications, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, Tin House, Los Angeles Review of Books, Aeon, The Millions, The New York Times, Salon, Elle, Vogue, and O, the Oprah Magazine. For many years Pamela was an editor at Glamour magazine.

What is this book about?
It’s 1979, and Aviva Rossner and Seung Jung are notorious at Auburn Academy. They’re an unlikely pair at an elite East Coast boarding school (she’s Jewish; he’s Korean American) and hardly shy when it comes to their sexuality. Aviva is a formerly bookish girl looking for liberation from an unhappy childhood; Seung is an enthusiastic dabbler in drugs and a covert rebel against his demanding immigrant parents. In the minds of their titillated classmates—particularly that of Bruce Bennett-Jones—the couple lives in a realm of pure, indulgent pleasure. But, as is often the case, their fabled relationship is more complicated than it seems: despite their lust and urgency, their virginity remains intact, and as they struggle to understand each other, the relationship spirals into disaster.

The Virgins is the story of Aviva and Seung’s descent into confusion and shame, as re-imagined in richly detailed episodes by their classmate Bruce, a once-embittered voyeur turned repentant narrator. With unflinching honesty and breathtaking prose, Pamela Erens brings a fresh voice to the tradition of the great boarding school novel.