"Devastatingly sharp and evocative . . . honest, judgeless prose." Read more.	"Merrick knows firsthand how difficult it is for women who write literary fiction... As one top agent wrote, 'Honey, you're the real thing, but I know I won't be able to sell this.'" Read more.
"already known as an underground sensation" Read more.	"Merrick has captured a part of the universal female experience that is rare in modern literature with statements like "...I also think, though I partly know it is not true, there would be a sister, a mother, a father, if I were beautiful." She captures the darker, more painful side of femininity from which beauty and strength grow." Read more.
"A moody, gothic debut, which makes for a brutal, and cathartic, emotional experience. It's a nice start for Merrick and Brooklyn-based Demimonde alike." Read more.	"The fabulous thing about a reading series is that (most of them, at least) aren't beholden to the very tough economics of the publishing world and are run pretty much solely on enthusiasm for great literature..." Read more.
"the real revolution would've been to have half women and half men. Another elite boys' club—we have enough of those already." Read more.

INTERVIEWS WITH ELIZABETH

Gothamist.com:
"I wanted to read a big-ass, epic, thoughtfully-written novel . . .that echoed the stories and worlds I was hearing in Bjork, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Sleater Kinney—it didn’t exist, I couldn’t find it. I would look on bookstore shelves so hopefully. But it wasn’t there. So I wrote it."
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Venuszine.com:
"Part of writing it was that I was very much interested in NOT writing a typical first novel or just writing a novel to write one. I wanted to write something that resembled the books that blew me away. One of those authors for me is Louise Erdrich, who is Faulknerian; I actually think that she takes Faulkner to the next level. She is commanding and I loved the sense of a community telling a story—this community of characters. I loved finding things from one character that the other characters don’t know about."
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REVIEWS

From Gothamist.com:
"Poetically atmospheric and compulsively readable."
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From Trigger Magazine:
"Blessedly Un Chick-Lit. Almost chemically addictive, for sure."
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From ReadySteadyBook.com:
"Girly enchants the reader while bringing them raw and scorching moments of truth and vision."
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From Artspass.com:
"Elizabeth Merrick has decided to take on chick lit with some lit of her own."
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MORE ARTICLES

From The Toledo Blade "Women's Lives are Reflected in 'Chick Lit' Genre"
"'I think it's wonderful that we have more content about women's lives than we did 10 years ago," said Merrick. "But there's so much more going in women's lives than what's frequently portrayed [in chick lit].'"


From The Observer
"Ms. Merrick admires n+1’s writing, but 'the real revolution would’ve been to have half women and half men. Another elite boys’ club—we have enough of those already.'"


From The Kennett Paper
"Merrick earns acclaim with her new book."


From Women's eNews "One by One, Women Count Bylines"
"For a year, in 2004, Merrick tallied New Yorker bylines on her blog in a regular posting called 'Weekly Spiritual Reckoning with the New Yorker.'
'I did it for a while,' she said. 'But then it got too depressing. It was like clock work; every week only 20 percent of the bylines would be from women and it was usually the same extremely established women writers.'"


From mediabistro fishbowlNY "2006: Who Knew Only Men Could Foretell the Future?"




MORE AUTHOR REVIEWS OF GIRLY

"Elizabeth Merrick masters a universe here, including the vast planets of girlhood, adolescence, daughter-, mother-, and sisterhood. Girly is a novel of great life and great pain. Merrick's characters and their voices sing and weave and dodge and ultimately embroider themselves on the reader's consciousness. To read Girly is to give yourself over to Racinda, Amandine, and Ruth, and to revel and weep in their power. Don't miss this."
— Kathleen Hughes, author of Dear Mrs. Lindbergh


"Elizabeth Merrick unleashes the devil in herself as she immerses us in her characters' gothic Christian world. With ambition and sensitivity, she takes us intimately into their tangled and multilayered webs of condemnation, rivalry, insecurity, and grudges that will never die. Meanwhile, she offers hope and light telling the stories of young girls struggling for a voice in the midst of it all."
— Paula Kamen, author of Her Way: Young Women Remake the Sexual Revolution


"GIRLY is a novel that takes risks and breaks conventions in compelling ways. Merrick is a writer unafraid to venture into new territory and to bring us with her."
— Martha Witt, author of Broken as Things Are