During the summer of 1999, Ali gets a job at a Huntington, Long Island grocery store. On the day she applies, she sees Justine and is struck at once with feelings different than those she gets from her boyfriend. At work, the two high schoolers start a fast friendship, taking them from dingy basement hangouts to North Shore mansions, frequenting record stores and malls along the way, all the while drunk and high. Justine is the titular object of Ali’s affection and fascination in Forsyth Harmon’s brutal and lovely illustrated book, JUSTINE.

We don’t learn much about Ali and even less about Justine over the course of this brief novel. Ali lives with her Swedish grandmother; her father is around but not present, and her mother is dead or gone. She and her grandmother watch television, eat junk food, and fuss over Ali’s cat and boyfriend. They are housemates, but their emotional connection doesn’t seem strong. Ali, like many teenage girls with a soft and sifting foundation, is too ready to try on other personas and carelessly accept the activity around her without question. She is blown over by the wind that is Justine, unsure if she wants to be her, or be with her.

"JUSTINE is a tremendous book: deep, moody and dark, but not without a compelling breathlessness.... Ali’s pain and her indifference are perfectly captured, and Harmon has threaded the right amount of pop culture into her tale."

Thus Ali experiments with starvation, purging, shoplifting, casual sex and heavy eyeliner a la Justine. Perhaps this was all part of Ali’s life before Justine, but it is clear that she is mirroring much of what she sees in her new friend and willingly losing herself in that reflection. Justine even changes Ali’s name with little resistance. Their intimacy is not untypical of teenage girls, but it is extraordinary for Ali, who narrows her focus that summer to Justine with little distraction. Even just leaning in to help Justine apply her eyeliner becomes a tender and heavy moment for Ali.

Yet, there is a touch of sweetness in JUSTINE. Ali’s new friend brings with her a boyfriend named Chris and his buddy, Ryan. Ryan and Ali hook up to the soundtrack of late-’90s rap, explained and analyzed by Ryan, a white suburbanite. There is more sensuality and affection in the eyeliner kind of moments than in Ali’s sex with Ryan, but Harmon delivers it all with the same detached, observational and effortless style. Before Ali’s fascination with Justine has time to temper, Justine reveals her cowardice. And before Ali can fully wrestle with that disappointment, the story comes to a screeching halt.

JUSTINE is a tremendous book: deep, moody and dark, but not without a compelling breathlessness. Teen life, loneliness, sex, body issues, friendship, queerness and familial discord are all finely wrought. The minimalist prose and illustration are no less gorgeous for being sparse. Ali’s pain and her indifference are perfectly captured, and Harmon has threaded the right amount of pop culture into her tale. Pre-cell phones and social media, Ali, Justine and their cohorts pour through magazines to gaze on idealized images of women, watch skate videos again and again, ponder hip-hop lyrics, take whatever drugs they can, and navigate tenuous and exciting relationships. The tragedies here are shattering and mundane.

An uncommon and incomparable coming-of-age story punctuated with enchanting and evocative line drawings, JUSTINE is a highly recommended debut novel.