Eating the Cheshire Cat is a stunning debut from a young writer whose expert literary craftsmanship rivals that of the most seasoned novelists. With humor both clever and macabre, Helen Ellis lures us into a world of perfectly planned parties and steep social ladders. Soon, traditional rites of passage take unpredictable and horrifying turns as three girls and their overbearing mothers collide.

Sarina Summers's mother believes that physical perfection is worth suffering for -- a lesson she faithfully teaches her daughter in the astonishing opening scene. In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, beauty is as beauty does, with axes and knives and in-your-face back-stabbing. Ruthless and vindictive, Sarina will stop at nothing to have it all.

Lurking in Sarina's shadow is Nicole Hicks, Sarina's devoted friend with only a fragile grasp on reality, whose repeated blunders undermine Mrs. Hicks's ambitious goals. As Nicole's self-destructive obsession with Sarina worsens, Bitty Jack Carlson is caught in the crossfire. A nice girl from the wrong side of the tracks, Bitty Jack fights to prove that she can succeed outside the confines of this outrageous yet eerily familiar Southern community.

From summer camp to the University of Alabama's race for the homecoming queen's throne, Southern stereotypes are challenged and wrestled to the ground. It's survival of the fittest. But which girl will come out on top? Readers will be guessing until the bitter end in this fast-paced and unforgettable first novel.

In Eating the Cheshire Cat, three little girls are born into the rigorous tradition of Southern womanhood, with all its standards of grace, beauty, and cutthroat competitiveness. Sarina, mean from birth and pretty as love, has the best chance of achieving Southern queenhood. Bitty Jack and Nicole are the two girls she leaves in her perfumed wake in this novel of friendship gone sour. Sweet-natured Bitty Jack attends summer camp with Sarina, who accuses Bitty Jack's father, the camp handyman, of being a pervert and ruins his life. Bitty Jack quietly nurtures a grudge. Nicole, meanwhile, suffers a frenzied obsession with Sarina throughout their adolescence and college years, an obsession that results in uniquely macabre expressions of love.

Helen Ellis's first novel tries to walk with its two feet simultaneously in three different territories, and if that sounds a little uncomfortable, well, it is. Eating the Cheshire Cat plays at the Southern Gothic surreal: Bitty Jack's first love affair is with a circus freak and the novel ends in an unsurprising sororal bloodbath. But it also toys with the comic: Sarina hatches elaborate plans to cover her reputation-building lies. And, at its best, it casts a cold, even a sociological, eye on the doings of Southern American princesses: Ellis describes the pledging of the Tri Delt sorority in loving detail. If, for instance, a girl doesn't make the Tuscaloosa chapter, she could "rush Auburn two weeks later. Maybe the girl would make Tri Delt there. But everyone knew that wasn't as good. It was an agricultural college, for crying out loud. At the Alabama-Auburn football games, those girls were known as Delta Dogs." It's a relief when Ellis lets her cattiness run wild--and doesn't goop it up with fake gore. --Claire Dederer