Yevgeniya Traps
The Virgins, Pamela Erens’s subtle, accomplished second novel, is set at Auburn Academy, a New Hampshire boarding school. The book begins in the fall of 1979 and covers a single academic year in the lives of Aviva Rossner and Seung (“pronounced like the past tense of sing”) Jung, doomed lovers, reckless exhibitionists, exotic standouts in their starchy WASP surroundings. Aviva, with her gold jewelry, cowboy boots, and pretty face full of provocative makeup, and Seung, a champion swimmer and inveterate pot smoker, quickly become objects of school fascination: “even the teachers talked about them.” Only a few years before, neither 
Call it the travelogue paradox: In books that purport to be about the perils and pleasures of life on the road, travel itself is typically no more than pretext. The real story being told has to with the self and its tentative steps into some great unknown. A travelogue is ultimately a coming-of-age story with its thumb stuck out.