Do You like book Girl (1994)?
I I wanted to use Girl for a Teen book display on music, but found that it was catalogued as Adult fiction. Huh? I had heard that it was a coming-of-age novel about a teenage girl who gets involved in her local grunge music scene in Portland in the 90s. So I read it to find out why it was in Adult.Now, I suppose I can see why it was. While no adult could ever enjoy reading this book, it does contain quite a bit of graphic sex. So much, in fact, that it struck me as unrealistic. Did normal teenagers in the 90s have so much graphic sex with so many different people and take it so lightly? Geez.Girl was written from the point of view of high school student Andrea Marr. It reads exactly like a teenage girl's diary, except possibly less interesting. More to the point, it's like listening to a self-absorbed teenage girl who can't shut up about anything she does. It's written entirely in run-on sentences. Nothing she does, no matter how trivial and uninteresting, is edited out. She doesn't have any clever observations or perspectives that so often make coming-of-age tales worth reading.TO my surprise, I found that this book has no shortage of positive reviews, with readers stating things like "This book could have been about my life!" This book could have been about me too, although my teenage years involved far, far less graphic sex. I was an outwardly dull, suburban loser with an exciting secret life. I was attracted by a counterculture music scene, hung out at seedy venues over my parents' objections, and mooned over a badass punk rock guy who was too old for me and jerked me around. However, I was less like Andrea than her friend that the plot revolved around: Cybil, the one who actually started a band and did some cool stuff. Yes, the book could have been about me. It still wasn't interesting.It would be interesting to go back through and count the number of times the characters in this awful book went to Scamp's for frozen yogurt. OK, I get it! You like frozen yogurt! You go to Scamp's for frozen yogurt! But after 50 times, reading about frozen yogurt starts to lose its zest!I gave this book two stars rather than one because I did sort of want to find out what happened. Reading it gave me a headache, but I did see it through to the last excruciating page.I would not recommend this piece of crap to anyone, unless they are under the age of 18 and interested in reading about frozen yogurt or graphic sex.
—Diana Welsch
I really liked the book, to be honest. This is a book that I will reread once every few years just because it's like one long deja vu trip. Andrea's voice is strong and honest and the entire book is told in a kind of stream of conscious that doesn't so much feel like we're reading the story as it happens, but that it's being recounted later. Either over coffee years after the fact, or because we found her diary helping her move.I'm not sure who this book was originally supposed to be marketed to. Because I know it's appeal now would be Young Adult. And certainly I would have loved to have gotten my hands on it in high school, but I remember what the YA books where like back then. And they weren't this...honest. Andrea has sex. Andrea's friends are having sex. They do drugs. They curse. They have eating disorders and question their sexuality and worry about being cool. This is what our lives were like. But to read the fiction we were being given it was like we were all buffered in happy cotton balls until our first days as undergrads.Some of Andrea's musings transcend the diary feel because the lines are just amazing. Also, they're pretty fucking astute. But then, Andrea was a smart kid, so it's no surprise. I liked that she didn't just one day wake up and go "I think I want to be a groupie today" but that the progression was natural enough that Andrea's relationship with Todd seemed about as real as it could have. I also really liked that Andrea wasn't the center of the scene she was in. If anything, she seems to fall into it, decide she likes it, and desperately wants to fit in. She's a character with flaws, but her flaws make her real.Overall this is a great read, I'm glad I reread it (again) and I recommend it to anybody.
—Aviva
This was THE book at a certain point in my life and I hadn't even read it, but the cool girls I wanted to be like were reading it, and whether they liked it or not, I had to have it because they had it. And I could quote the parts they liked best because they were quoting them and I still remember a lot of those quotes. Anyway, I asked for it for Christmas. Six or seven years ago. And I'd read the first page and flip ahead but I'd never actually READ IT. I was really reluctant and I'm still not sure why. Maybe because the girls I wanted to be seemed so distant from anything I could be and it was weird (to me) to try to dive into something that was so in their sphere, which I assumed was so outside of mine. So I watched the movie instead. And every time I'd pass Girl on my bookshelf or hear someone talking about it I'd get nostalgic about this book I hadn't even READ. And now it's six or seven years later and I read it and it was good*. The end.* great style!
—Courtney