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"  &amp;quot;It is the blight man was born for/ It is Margaret you mourn for.&amp;quot; Gerard Manley Hopkins&amp;#039; nineteenth-century poem about lost innocence, the epigraph of Francine Prose&amp;#039;s fifteenth novel,Goldengrove (Harper), sets the tone for her quietly devastating portrait of a grieving family. Here, Margaret is the elder of two teenage daughters, a charismatic stunner who, just before heading off to college, drowns in the lake in front of their home. The rest of the story, told by Margaret&amp;#039;s 13-year-old sister, Nico, spans a summer in which family members stumble around and into each other, trying to figure out how to live without their golden girl. Nico adored everything about Margaret: her love of old films and songs, her vintage clothes, even her scent (&amp;quot;like cookies baking...I was the pudgy, awkward sister. I still smelled dusty, like a kid&amp;quot;). To her parents&amp;#039; dismay, Nico also adores Margaret&amp;#039;s indie-god boyfriend, Aaron, who is shattered by the death. In an attempt to return to normalcy, Nico and Aaron bond, doing the things they did with Margaret\u2014watching movies, eating ice cream. &amp;quot;Maybe it was possible to decontaminate certain activities, the way flood victims wash the silt off family treasures and set them back on the mantel,&amp;quot; Nico rationalizes as their clandestine rendezvous flame into unhealthy obsession. But while Nico and Aaron may cross the line, Prose, a keen chronicler of human emotion, doesn&amp;#039;t, either in her restrained description of their charged relationship or in her sympathetic portrayal of those left flailing in Margaret&amp;#039;s wake. Our hearts go out to Nico, a naive and utterly un-Gilmore-ish girl. As we watch her struggle simultaneously with coming of age and coming to terms with loss, we mourn, but we also have faith that she&amp;#039;ll find her own way. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/books/reviews/a9286/young-gifted-dead-19751/?src=global_footer>