Native pens observant, witty debut

GIRLS IN TRUCKS. By Katie Crouch. Little Brown. 241 pages. $21.99.

Charleston native Katie Crouch has written a first novel, or perhaps a collection of linked short stories, that is sneaky and insinuating — in the best way. What starts as a loopy, rather generic coming-of-age story (Southern debutante moves North, drops her manners, drinks, pops pills, sleeps around, wises up, goes home) takes on shading and depth as Sarah Walters, Crouch's protagonist, comes to realize that she might have missed her window for spectacular action.

Instead, she'll stumble along, bumping up against the wrong men and losing ground on the job. The expected, outwardly expanding story of the little life that becomes a big life is trite compared with what Crouch delivers: the story of a little life that comes to know itself for what it is. From the start, Walters is lovable and fun; by the end, she's also smart enough to know that "almost happy" is sometimes good enough.

Local readers will recognize Cotillion, the Wednesday night dance school that apprentices Charleston's "good girls and boys" to the social order.

As a follow-up to Cotillion training, Walters and her friends also are polished up as Camellias, members of a fictional debutante society run by their mothers. Camellias receive loads of advice, much of it in aphoristic format ("Never chase men or buses").

Over the course of the novel, many codes and adages fall away, but Crouch lets Walters hang on to one of her childhood lessons: "It is the duty of the Camellia to observe."

Walters wisecracks her way through the trials that test her and her friends — drug addiction, infidelity, cancer, suicide — but she also observes it all in true Camellia fashion.

Crouch earns honorary Camellia points for her beautifully observed novel and her bracing vision of the heart that can, as she says, be scraped in the morning and repaired by noon.