Hurricane Girl by Marcy Dermansky

Book Review by Colleen Lutz Clemens ​

It has been a long time since I have flown through a book as quickly as I flew through Marcy Dermansky’s fifth novel Hurricane Girl.  If it weren’t for family and work and all the things, I would have finished it in a day; instead, it took two.  When I sat down to read it, I had no idea I would be drawn in so quickly to the story of Allison Brody, who loses everything in the first pages and spends the rest of the novel trying to figure out how to put her lives—physical, psychic, professional—back together again.  

The reader spends the novel in the mind of Allison Brody, who has suffered a traumatic brain injury after making what she knows is a dangerous decision.  From there, we watch Allison relearn how to trust her mind again as it heals from a gruesome attack.  Her clueless brother and anxious mother move in and out of the story while her college on-and-off-again boyfriend—now serendipitously her brain surgeon—becomes central to her world. Allison is unsure of whether she likes him or his access to the stunning pool sitting atop his luxury apartment building.  She swims her way to healing and a resolve to close the story of her trauma.  The last few pages move like hurricane winds and leave the reader astounded in their wake. 

I have loved every book Dermansky has written.  They are taut, efficiently-told stories that force the reader to keep turning the page.  I am not alone in admiring Dermansky’s work. Roxane Gay writes that Dermansky is “one of my favorite writers.”  If you have never had the pleasure of reading on of her novels, Hurricane Girl is an excellent starting place and will kick off your summer reading season like a storm.  

Hurricane Girl will be released on June 14, 2022, and can be preordered now.

Colleen Lutz Clemens is a professor of English at Kutztown University where she also directs the Women’s, Gender, and Sexualities program.  She is the mother of one and the teacher of many.  Her musings and publications are housed at her blog.