THE GILDED BUTTERFLY EFFECT

Assault and substance abuse prevail under the cover of good times in this campus novel.

College sophomores Stella and Penny begin an unlikely friendship after Penny joins her high school friend Leah in her “new life” at the University of Michigan, “where football is King.” Penny takes up residence in the living room of the Kappa Alpha sorority, in which both Leah and Stella are sisters. Life there revolves around drug-fueled and alcohol-drenched parties where the sisters strive to maintain their place at the top of the hierarchy of Greek life by being the girls desired by the boys at the most prestigious fraternities: The Church and its up-and-coming rival, Sigma Rho. Both girls are troubled: Stella is haunted by a sexual assault the previous spring by a Church brother, Penny by depression she describes as an elephant on her heart telling her “that I’m no good, and that I’ve always been no good, and that I’ll indefinitely be this way.” In the closed system of Greek life, the use of pharmaceuticals for treatment rather than partying is scorned, and even parents participate when they show up for Parents Weekend. The lively text alternates first-person chapters from Stella’s and Penny’s points of view with an omniscient third-person narration who reveals the perspectives of fraternity brothers, parents, and others. Award-winning short story author Colley’s long-form debut sticks uncomfortably close to the mindset of characters who see the world with bleary eyes. Her downbeat ending offers neither Stella nor Penny a good way out.

Much like a frat party: bleak and claustrophobic but with manic, fizzy energy.