‘Becoming Carly Klein’: Elizabeth Harlan’s love letter to adolescence

A conversation with author Elizabeth Harlan (BC ‘67) revealed how her adolescence in NYC and experiences at Barnard shaped her novel “Becoming Carly Klein” (spoiler-free).

Image provided by Hannah Robertson/Books Fluent

By Jem Hanan

April 10, 2025

“Becoming Carly Klein,” Elizabeth Harlan’s (BC ‘67) third coming-of-age novel, is inextricably tied to Barnard and New York City. Set in 1980s New York, the novel follows the journey of teenager Carly Klein as she navigates the complexities of adolescence. As she wades her way through family strife, first love, youthful rebellion, deception, and heartbreak, Carly grows into herself and her identity. 

A central aspect of Carly’s path to self-discovery is her complex relationship with her mother, Gwen, a psychologist. Driven by curiosity and perhaps a desire for connection beyond her family, Carly becomes deeply interested in one of Gwen’s patients, Daniel, a blind junior at Columbia College. This fascination leads Carly to an act of deception: she memorizes Daniel’s contact information from a notice and calls him, posing as “Serena,” a sophomore at Barnard College seeking a reading job. The novel spends time with Carly in Morningside Heights as she attends her classes, works at a health food co-op, and gets coffee at the now-shut-down Chock full o’Nuts — all under the guise of a college student. 

The intimacy with which the novel speaks of Barnard and Columbia revealed Harlan’s deep affection for the school before I even sat down to speak with her. A prime example of this is how Harlan writes Carly’s first encounter with Columbia in a near-reverential tone: “She’s amazed at the existence within New York City of such a great and formal courtyard, of the perfectly straight hedgerows that line the well-ordered maze of pathways that lead to imposing buildings with oxidized green copper roofs that form the enclosure that separates this other world, almost like a magical kingdom in a storybook, from the messy, dirty streets outside.” This sentiment, along with many others in the book, was shared with Harlan in her own life. 

“You’re dealing with someplace I like best in the world,” Harlan said of Barnard in the opening minutes of our conversation. She spoke with a joyous, if a bit wistful, nostalgia that imbued every story she shared with me — many of which inspired the novel’s events. Harlan explained that her first exposure to Barnard was through her stepsister, who would come home with stories of her classes and campus life. Harlan, in high school at the time, would cut classes to attend lectures with her sister. Absolutely enraptured by the sprawling hall and intellectual atmosphere, she didn’t mind that the professor was lecturing about geography, a subject she never had an interest in. “My romance with Barnard began in this clandestine act of cutting high school and attending college,” she said. 

Harlan’s decision to cut school to attend classes with her sister mirrors Carly’s experience of sitting in on Daniel’s classes. However, as our conversation continued, it became clear that Harlan didn’t just graft a singular personal anecdote into the book, but shaped Carly’s entire character around her own deep-rooted sense of independence. Carly’s rebelliousness in the novel reflects Harlan’s own adolescent desire to express her autonomy. Harlan described one such action she took with childlike glee. As a high school sophomore, she practically enrolled herself at 15 at the Lycee Francais de New York, an independent French-American school, with only two years of high school French under her belt (“which was nothing,” she said, “I could barely say bonjour”) and a burning impulse to take control of her life. She requested an interview and was shown to the office of the director of the school — she left with an application to be signed by her parents in hand and spent the remainder of her high school years at the Lycee. She would later major in French at Barnard. Harlan’s fascination with the uniquely adolescent reckless abandon found its way into her novel, where Carly’s actions, although ethically murky, lead to her character’s necessary personal growth. 

A headshot of Elizabeth Harlan.

Photo provided by Hannah Robertson/Books Fluent

As Harlan delved into her time at Barnard, she sketched a window into the past. The school with ashtrays built into lecture hall chairs, a Columbia that was not yet coed, housing that did not extend to students who lived in a 50-mile radius, and a “smoke-filled, bohemian atmosphere” initially felt distant. 

However, the earnestness with which Harlan crafted this time capsule, both in speech and in her novel, bridged the temporal gap between a decades-old Barnard and Columbia and the current one. This is in part due to Harlan’s continued interweaving with the schools: Harlan attended Barnard from 1963 to 1967, then returned to Columbia in the ‘80s to pursue her MFA in fiction writing, where she wrote what would eventually become “Becoming Carly Klein” for her thesis. Harlan drew on her undergraduate and graduate school experiences, as well as the perspective she has gained over time, to shape her novel. 

When I asked Harlan about Carly’s less-than-stellar impressions of the Barnard girls hanging around the health co-op, she admitted that the students were based on herself and her friends. “We all had long hair, all parted straight in the middle, and we all wore black. It was that era. We all thought of ourselves, if not as hippies, but in that inclination. And every time we would come out of a class we would go somewhere and smoke and drink coffee — a lot of coffee — and we would put everything down. If we didn’t like a lesson that was taught either because it was difficult, or we felt left out, or insecure, we would find some way of saying ‘oh, it’s just derivative.’” I laughed at this knowingly — some things never change.

Barnard’s atmosphere initially served as a reprieve from Harlan’s picture-perfect, prim-and-proper life on the Upper East Side, as it does for Carly in the novel. What it became for both Carly and Harlan was an environment for exposure to people outside of their tight-knit circles in adolescence. Looking beyond the self underpins much of the novel and speaks to the unique city college experience of encountering such a diverse pool of people. 

“The vantage point of a young person coming of age and seeing the world through those unspoiled, unjaded eyes but at the same time gaining an awareness and a sophistication — that’s exactly why I write YA. To me, that’s the most potent experience that I had of coming alive, of coming into my own identity, of struggling to understand who I was, but remembering the struggle.” Harlan’s feelings toward one’s college years went beyond nostalgia; it was a genuine respect for the formative experiences found in those four years. This respect is central to the novel and is especially apparent to a college-aged reader. 

As our conversation came to a close, I asked Harlan what she hoped a Barnard student would take away from “Becoming Carly Klein,” seeing that the persona of a college student is so integral to the novel. She answered the following: “I’d like a Barnard student or any student to get a sense of connection to who he or she was or is and what that thread is like. The growing up experience, the having wide eyes on this great, big, beautiful, wonderful, complex, problematic world we live in. That’s what I think I want one to connect with as my reader, and I would hope that a Barnard student would be somebody who would be in a very fertile place to make that connection.” 

Speaking with Harlan left me with a powerful sense of appreciation for where I am. It is easy as a young woman at Barnard to get caught up in the idea of the future to the point where our surroundings become a blur. However, Harlan’s ability to articulate the complexities of what it means to be a young person in her novel is a testament to how impactful her time at Barnard was. Carly also embodies the ambition, passion, and rashness of youth — qualities I recognized within myself. “Becoming Carly Klein” reminded me to not take those strengths for granted and to utilize them in a space like Barnard. There will be moments when I look back on my Barnard years, long past them, doing who knows what. I hope in those moments, I can remember those years as fondly as Harlan remembers her own.