Quantum Girl Theory

January 17, 2022
In this intriguing if diffuse speculative debut, Ryan imagines what might have happened to “quiet” and “unremarkable” Paula Jean Welden, a real-life Bennington College student who went missing in 1946. Ryan proposes a “quantum girl theory” to account for the phenomenon that “a missing girl becomes everything that everyone thinks she might be,” and uses the conceit to tell a series of parallel stories. Alternately, Ryan has Paula Jean dead by a teacher’s hand, a circus performer, a writer after stealing another woman’s identity, and other possibilities. As a clairvoyant, Paula Jean goes by Mary and takes on the pain of others “the way a boxer might take punches.” She hopes to collect a reward for a missing white girl in 1961 North Carolina, and gets embroiled in solving the disappearances of two Black girls. While there are common elements to all the versions of Paula Jean—her red parka, her “Sight,” and love for a girl she went to high school with—there are many starts and stops as Ryan explores the different outcomes with little forward momentum. Still, she has a knack for clever turns of phrase and imbues her concept with smart insights on the public’s fascination with missing girls and young women. It’s a little rocky, but it’s worth a look. Agent: Dorian Karchmar, WME.

September 1, 2022

In the opening minutes of Ryan's debut, a privileged white student named Paula Jean Weldon disappears from Bennington College in 1946. In subsequent chapters, Ryan spins possible fates for Weldon, many of them grim: she is murdered by a lover, she joins a circus, she is lobotomized and married to the doctor who performed the operation. Paula's potential endings are interwoven with a longer narrative in which Paula has transformed herself into Mary, a woman who uses her psychic gift to help find other missing girls. Drawn by reward money, Mary insinuates herself into a Southern town where one white girl and two Black girls are missing, although only the white girl's disappearance has garnered publicity. Narrator Saskia Maarleveld's smoky voice resignedly conveys the weight of societal burdens. Joining Maarleveld, P. J. Ochlan sets the scene by reading newspaper-style interludes with the brassy aplomb of an old-fashioned newsreel. Joniece Abbott-Pratt narrates a section from the point-of-view of one of the missing girls; her soft Southern accent presents a compelling contrast to Maarleveld's world-weary tone. VERDICT This smart, wrenching exploration of the restrictions and mythologies that bound mid-century American women is not to be missed.--Emily Calkins

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