Girls They Write Songs About

“Girls They Write Songs About is a love story about two friends, but it’s also something thornier - a narrative about the cycles of enchantment, disenchantment and re-enchantment that make up a life.”  -  Molly Young, The New York Times

New York, 1997. As the city's gritty edges are being smoothed into something safer and shinier, two aspiring writers meet at a music magazine. Rose - brash and self-possessed - is a staff writer. Charlotte - hesitant, bookish - is an editor. First wary, then slowly admiring, they recognize in each other an insatiable and previously unmatched ambition. Soon they're inseparable.

Everyone has their own New York, and for Rose and Charlotte, it was a place to feed their ambition, a place to dance and party and fall in love, far from the suburbs they once called home. It was New York City, and it was everything they ever wanted.  Their friendship was different too: intense and life-changing. The kind that only happens once. The kind that couldn’t last forever. 

"Charlotte's narration rings true for the discerning writer and editor she is; the prose is razor-sharp and utterly devoid of clutter... With deftness and candour, Bauer tells a moving and thoughtful story of how desire and ambition change over time and how to make sense of the messiness of carving out a path and life of one's own. A smart and beautifully rendered portrait of two women's lives."  -  Kirkus Reviews

In Carlene Bauer’s gloriously exuberant novel, Rose and Charlotte look back and reckon with the loss of a friendship that helped define them, shaping their lives more than any love affair.