The Death of Spiderman's First Love - Debut Novel by Sarah Bruni

Sheila obsessively studies French in the hopes of leaving her small town home after her high school graduation. At her job as a nighttime gas station attendant, she meets a stranger who calls himself Peter Parker, after the true identity of the web-slinging superhero Spiderman. He believes that Sheila is Spiderman's first love, Gwen Stacy, and despite that (or perhaps because of it) she is drawn to the mysterious stranger. Soon he convinces her to run away with him to Chicago, but will not tell her why. The Night Gwen Stacy Died by Sarah Bruni is a one-of-a-kind debut coming-of-age novel, with romance, literary fiction, and comic books mixed in.

The book is a dizzying blend of fantasy and reality, where one cannot tell where the myths end and the real world begins. It relies on the Spiderman narrative to frame its story, but don't worry! Readers not familiar with the comics will not be lost since the novel is more about the search for identity and the creation of new ones than about the superhero story. One fault of the novel is that the characters tend to be emotionless and can be hard to identify with, but fans of Spiderman will enjoy Bruni's numerous nods to the original comics. If you love Spiderman or smart, experimental fiction, you should read The Night Gwen Stacy Died.