How to Breathe Underwater

'Outstanding'; 'unbelievably good'; 'pitch perfect'; clear, cool and enticing'; 'subtle and multi-layered': these are just some of the justified reactions to Julie Orringer's first collection of short stories.

In these nine tales she has managed to capture the peculiar and strange world of the adolescent American girl without resorting to exaggeration or cliché.

The lives of Orringer's protagonists are constrained by religion (specifically Judaism in some of the stories), antagonistic siblings, traumatic loss - or immiment loss - of a mother from cancer; or the temptations of sex and independence. Adolescence is a turbulent ocean of peaks and troughs, and Orringer is adept at inferring this. 'Note to Sixth Grade Self', in particular, brilliantly immerses the reader in the internal dialogue of a self-conscious, bullied and briefly hopeful girl.

It is possible to assume from the fact that How to Breathe Underwater is dedicated to the memory of her mother that Julie Orringer experienced at least some of the pain that her characters go through herself. If this is indeed the case, she has succeeded magnificently in channelling her heartache into these understated but moving stories.