An electric novel about the pleasures and perils of experience and what it means to come of age, from the “stylish, elegant” (Mary Gaitskill) author of Acts of Service.

"I’ve waited a lifetime for these specific characters . . . I loved it." —Miranda July

"I couldn’t put it down. . . . Swallowed me right up." —Yael van der Wouden

"Brilliant."—Ayad Akhtar

Everyone has a love story, but hers would be distinguished. It would mark her. She wanted to be so marked.

Prima arrives for her first year of college, determined to enter the lawless, sumptuous world of adulthood. When she begins a relationship with her literature professor, the popular and enigmatic Heiss, she feels as if she has crossed into new terrain—a world of dimly lit restaurants, bitter cocktails, midnight cab rides across Manhattan, and the astonishing intimacies of sex.

But Prima isn’t the first student to catch Heiss’s eye. She soon finds herself on the radar of faculty and former students, eager to protect young women from encounters they may later regret. And, in the midst of Prima and Heiss’s affair, a flood of intrusions from the past force Heiss to grapple with the treacherous responsibilities of desire.

Is Prima’s a grand love story or a travesty? Can we anticipate how we’ll feel about our formative experiences when we’re older? Women and Children is a riveting story of youth, agency, and power—what it means to wield it and yield to it—from a writer who has “made the human creature feel like something new” (Sheila Heti).