The Girl From the Coast

Book:	The Girl From the Coast: A Novel
Author:	Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Willem Samuels
Honors:	2002 Kiriyama-Fiction finalist Score: 6.52
Genres:	Fiction books
Publisher:	Hyperion

In a poor coastal fishing village, a beautiful girl unknowingly attracts the attention of a local aristocrat. Before she knows it, she is forced to marry this man she has never seen and leave behind all that is familiar to her—her carefree days spent helping her mother with daily tasks, dreamily listening to the sounds of the wind and the waves, and watching boats come and go. She is taken away to her husband’s manor in the city and plunged into a strange world of opulence and quiet severity.

Gradually the Girl from the Coast grows acclimated to the ways of the household but becomes increasingly plagued by doubts. Where does her husband go for days on end? What does he really think of her? Why is everyone so afraid of him? Too timid to ask him these kinds of questions directly she repeatedly turns to the maidservant who has been assigned to her; and it is from her conversations with this older woman that the girl begins to understand the truth about her new life.

What follows is a tale of a young woman’s journey down a lonely and painful path to maturity. Along the way, she confronts the harsh realities of a society in which females are little more than property, a society made up of those who issue orders and those who carry them out.

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