Winter Girls ~ Ummmm...
I like the cover of this novel ~ Nice cover; Lose the drama.
The writing sucks the big one; how trite and trivial is this drivel? There appears to be a lot of domestic dishwasher knifery and talk about death as if it were always imminent, and then there is those warm muffins...
.
Reality
May we be free of torture from Laurie Halse Anderson Teenage Angst and Adolescent Despondency - Childhood Vignettes. Let's bake cookies.
Wintergirls Excerpt: Chapter One
So she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee.
She tells me in four sentences. No, five.
I can’t let me hear this, but it’s too late. The facts sneak in and stab me. When she gets to the worst part
. . . body found in a motel room, alone . . .
. . . my walls go up and my doors lock. I nod like I’m listening, like we’re communicating, and she never knows the difference.
It’s not nice when girls die.
Chapter Two
“We didn’t want you hearing it at school or on the news.” Jennifer crams the last hunk of muffin into her mouth. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I open the dishwasher and lean into the cloud of steam that floats out of it. I wish I could crawl in and curl up between a bowl and a plate. My stepmother Jennifer could lock the door, twist the dial to scald, and press on.
The steam freezes when it touches my face. “I’m fine,” I lie.
She reaches for the box of oatmeal raisin cookies on the table. “This must feel awful.” She rips off the cardboard ribbon. “Worse than awful. Can you get me a clean container?”
I take a clear plastic box and lid out of the cupboard and hand it across the island to her. “Where’s Dad?”
“He had a tenure meeting.”
“Who told you about Cassie?”
She crumbles the edges of the cookies before she puts them in the box, to make it look like she baked instead of bought. “Your mother called late last night with the news. She wants you to see Dr. Parker right away instead of waiting for your next appointment.”
“Dead girl walking,” the boys say in the halls.
“Tell us your secret,” the girls whisper, one toilet to another.
I am that girl.
I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.
I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame. ~ Anorexia Nervosa
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=444236575
http://halseanderson.livejournal.com/
It is the American sickness, "young girls in need of love sent to therapy."
Here by the way is someone who knows what I might be talking about...
(Luke describing his experience @ university):
"...everyplace you looked, children. You'd see them in the cafeteria primping and preening and puk-puk-padokking, speech-making at each other, some of them, the rest of them nodding, very solemn, as if it were all oh so interesting, talking about books nobody past the age of twelve would read all the way through except to punish himself, yammering about Communism and Capitalism and Christianity and the Good Lay, and back in the dorm all the baby professors would do imitations, learning the gestures and the Right Quotations, prattling about Tillich and Bishop Pike and Mr. Fromm, and relaxing their minds in the great American way with talk about baseball and footbball and cunts, and the brave stupid ones would talk about defending freedom in Vietnam and the cowardly stupid ones would talk about How We Had No Business There, and if you fled to where the intellectuals weren't, it was as bad as anywhere else, cooks, bartenders, ushers at the show, talking talking talking, or standing around like mutes because they hadn't even the brains for their kind of talk, not human, kids not even grade-school age yet, big as they were, or the med-students, the real true anti-intellectuals, with their contests over how many girls they could screw, parties where everybody screwed everybody, eight, nine in a bed. Fun? Christ's hair. But they were great stuff they thought -all of them, med-school children, bartender children, professor children- they were all somebody; thought they were cops. If a movie came out that was supposed to be Art they all sat solemn and said Look at the Art; if it was supposed to be funny they all went Ha-ha, if it was supposed to be sad they all made crying noises; if they were church types they preach at you. if they were atheist types they preached harder than the others. They kept falling in love, and it was like one huge chorus going up in the park, a thousand voices all howling "She's different!" But I was ready for it all. I understood. They were children, horse's prick children playing dress up. And i was one too, right -the grouchy one that wants to play some other game, because he can't play this one- but say what you like, at least I wasn't fooled. There are no grown-ups. There are only children and dead people. So I quit. Bon soir, mes enfants. For which I thank you."
Luke Hodge, The Sunlight Dialogues (John Gardner)
Refer to Beokitty;
http://beokitty.livejournal.com/527689.html
.
The writing sucks the big one; how trite and trivial is this drivel? There appears to be a lot of domestic dishwasher knifery and talk about death as if it were always imminent, and then there is those warm muffins...
.
Reality
May we be free of torture from Laurie Halse Anderson Teenage Angst and Adolescent Despondency - Childhood Vignettes. Let's bake cookies.
Wintergirls Excerpt: Chapter One
So she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee.
She tells me in four sentences. No, five.
I can’t let me hear this, but it’s too late. The facts sneak in and stab me. When she gets to the worst part
. . . body found in a motel room, alone . . .
. . . my walls go up and my doors lock. I nod like I’m listening, like we’re communicating, and she never knows the difference.
It’s not nice when girls die.
Chapter Two
“We didn’t want you hearing it at school or on the news.” Jennifer crams the last hunk of muffin into her mouth. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I open the dishwasher and lean into the cloud of steam that floats out of it. I wish I could crawl in and curl up between a bowl and a plate. My stepmother Jennifer could lock the door, twist the dial to scald, and press on.
The steam freezes when it touches my face. “I’m fine,” I lie.
She reaches for the box of oatmeal raisin cookies on the table. “This must feel awful.” She rips off the cardboard ribbon. “Worse than awful. Can you get me a clean container?”
I take a clear plastic box and lid out of the cupboard and hand it across the island to her. “Where’s Dad?”
“He had a tenure meeting.”
“Who told you about Cassie?”
She crumbles the edges of the cookies before she puts them in the box, to make it look like she baked instead of bought. “Your mother called late last night with the news. She wants you to see Dr. Parker right away instead of waiting for your next appointment.”
“Dead girl walking,” the boys say in the halls.
“Tell us your secret,” the girls whisper, one toilet to another.
I am that girl.
I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.
I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame. ~ Anorexia Nervosa
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=444236575
http://halseanderson.livejournal.com/
It is the American sickness, "young girls in need of love sent to therapy."
Here by the way is someone who knows what I might be talking about...
(Luke describing his experience @ university):
"...everyplace you looked, children. You'd see them in the cafeteria primping and preening and puk-puk-padokking, speech-making at each other, some of them, the rest of them nodding, very solemn, as if it were all oh so interesting, talking about books nobody past the age of twelve would read all the way through except to punish himself, yammering about Communism and Capitalism and Christianity and the Good Lay, and back in the dorm all the baby professors would do imitations, learning the gestures and the Right Quotations, prattling about Tillich and Bishop Pike and Mr. Fromm, and relaxing their minds in the great American way with talk about baseball and footbball and cunts, and the brave stupid ones would talk about defending freedom in Vietnam and the cowardly stupid ones would talk about How We Had No Business There, and if you fled to where the intellectuals weren't, it was as bad as anywhere else, cooks, bartenders, ushers at the show, talking talking talking, or standing around like mutes because they hadn't even the brains for their kind of talk, not human, kids not even grade-school age yet, big as they were, or the med-students, the real true anti-intellectuals, with their contests over how many girls they could screw, parties where everybody screwed everybody, eight, nine in a bed. Fun? Christ's hair. But they were great stuff they thought -all of them, med-school children, bartender children, professor children- they were all somebody; thought they were cops. If a movie came out that was supposed to be Art they all sat solemn and said Look at the Art; if it was supposed to be funny they all went Ha-ha, if it was supposed to be sad they all made crying noises; if they were church types they preach at you. if they were atheist types they preached harder than the others. They kept falling in love, and it was like one huge chorus going up in the park, a thousand voices all howling "She's different!" But I was ready for it all. I understood. They were children, horse's prick children playing dress up. And i was one too, right -the grouchy one that wants to play some other game, because he can't play this one- but say what you like, at least I wasn't fooled. There are no grown-ups. There are only children and dead people. So I quit. Bon soir, mes enfants. For which I thank you."
Luke Hodge, The Sunlight Dialogues (John Gardner)
Refer to Beokitty;
http://beokitty.livejournal.com/527689.html
.