- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Chatto & Windus; New edition edition (3 July 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0701166649
- ISBN-13: 978-0701166649
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,650,635 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Marie Claire
'Riveting reading. As coming-of-age memoirs go, this is one of the best'
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
"Cheesecake, jailbait, sex kitten" - the very words seemed to "open doors" to a powerful, sexy new self. But from the moment she decides to lose her virginity and reels in her prey, a "full-grown man", 14-year-old Kathy is headed for trouble. One cold, raw March night some months later, in a car with four boys she thought were friends, she finds it. This is her story, told with frightening detachment, honesty and lack of self-pity. Full of raw emotion, humour, horror, it simply tells it how it was - as the eldest of six children in a liberal enough close-knit Catholic family, with rebellious brothers, a young exhausted mother, and a glamorous father whom she idolised. In the spring of her 14th year suddenly "the earth blossomed with men and boys - they were everywhere" and "a halter top went straight to the point; it started its own conversations. Wearing one was as good as having a personality." But girls who breaks rules in small towns like the one she lived in are expected to pay a high price for their transgressions - and she did. That fateful year culminated in a gang rape. How she stepped out of that car, forever altered, to be sure, but not forever damaged, how she learned to fight back, even to wear her stigma with a perverse pride, is the other part of the story she tells. Always aware that her ambitions were bigger and more complicated than those of the suburbs where she grew up, Kathy was determined to come through, and the reader, drawn deep into her story, has a stake in the outcome.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a true story set in 1970's America, told from a girl who is from a deeply religious and righteous family. When she enters her teenage years she decides she wants to lose her virginity and promptly sits on the kerb and waits for someone to come along and take her up on the offer. A very frank and disturbing account, told through the eyes of one girl who sets off on a quest to find someone to love. She tells of sexual experiences with both boys and older men, but it is when she has sex with a group of boys to please her boyfriend that everything backfires on her. You will learn something from this book if nothing else. Not exactly a light read though.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
43 reviews
36 of 37 people found the following review helpful
How To Be A Girl
2 April 2003
Format:Hardcover
As a sexual assault therapist, one of my teen clients once told me: "What gets you a slutty reputation is not what you do or how many times you do it," she replied, "but who you do it *with.*"
This, it seems to me, is a central message of Dobie's insightful memoir: When it comes to girls and sexuality, image is everything. What Dobie-a naïve 14-year-old from a "good" Catholic family-does not understand is that reputation is all-important and there are different rules for boys and girls. She thinks that she can be one of the boys, that she can be accepted into their wild and unruly democracy. She wants to live the life her father lives, "a large life filled with drama." She wants to act, while simultaneously being acted upon-both the subject and object of desire. Even though she recognizes that women's sexuality is viewed with equal parts attraction and revulsion, she holds to the belief that she can "reap the desire and dodge the loathing."
Dobie's book is about *a* sexual assault, yes, but it is about so much more than that. It is about being both insider and outsider; about the kindness and cruelty of peers; about the uniqueness of a young girl's desire; about being white and non-working-class; about "bad" boys and the contradictory expectations for men in American culture. It is about two years of one girl's life in a large family in a small town in the 1960's.
If the goal of good writing is, as Anne Lamott says, "to turn the unspeakable into words-not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues," then Dobie has done just that. Her language is lyrical and specific, laced with details that capture the mood and setting of each freshly-exposed experience.
The book does not aspire to the rough and randy humor of Mary Karr's "The Liar's Club," or the wry wittiness of Haven Kimmel's "A Girl Named Zippy" or the hardscrabble power of "Mama's Girl" by Veronica Chambers. In terms of subject matter, it is similar to Naomi Woolf's "Promiscuities," Deborah Kogan's "Shutterbabe," and Laurie Anderson's deftly-handled novel, "Speak."
This is a memoir not so much about the perils of sexuality and risk-taking as about learning the limitations of femaleness in a hyper-masculinized culture. Those who think it is all about trauma are missing the point. Dobie bears witness to the possibility of accommodating to life in a woman's body-acquainted with but uncontained by fear.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Exquisite
20 Mar 2003
Format:Hardcover
I was deeply moved by this book. I found the language poetic; the prose stunning. And, most importantly, I think, the author made me *feel* in a visceral way, what the protagonist was feeling. I was touched by the friendships - true friendships, that came from places that would (in the eyes of a society that sees things in black and white) seem implausable - yet there they were - glorious, for all of us to see. And I felt hurt for the utter betrayal suffered by a 15 year old girl. Naivete should never (but often does) lead to harm...and I felt for the "scrappy" 15 year old protagonist as she tried to find some kind of way to masculine affection. I think that Ms. Dobie has written an important book; I know many 15 year old girls who will feel empowered by her words; and I know many 51 year old women who will read her words and have them resonate inside them. But this isn't a woman's book; boys and men and intricately intertwined, and I pray that the title deosn't turn them off, for I know men who will read this book and see their daughters, their sisters - and themselves. Ms. Dobie has written truthfully; and at the same time leaves us with the message that the world is a big, bad and beautiful place. I highly recommend this book.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
What would your narrative say?
24 Feb 2005
Format:Paperback
Kathy Dobie is a powerful yet simple writer. The prologue immediately pulls you in and touches each of your senses as well as your memory and empathy as the story develops.
It is fascinating to watch the old and young Kathy make the connections about how the past and present combine to who you are. If there is any one lack in this memoir is that once the "definitive moment" actually takes place I don't feel I completely understand how the protagonist really grew past it. We know what she does at 17 and where she is now but I found myself wanting to know what the 20 years in between were like. Now granted, that would have been a really long memoir!
This is a very well written memoir and I love the quote, "What narrative has this person fashioned to help him or her survive?" Kathy Dobie is speaking of those that she now writes about but it is about herself and all of us. We all create a story about ourselves but it is up to each of us to decide how true it really is.
This ia great read.
It is fascinating to watch the old and young Kathy make the connections about how the past and present combine to who you are. If there is any one lack in this memoir is that once the "definitive moment" actually takes place I don't feel I completely understand how the protagonist really grew past it. We know what she does at 17 and where she is now but I found myself wanting to know what the 20 years in between were like. Now granted, that would have been a really long memoir!
This is a very well written memoir and I love the quote, "What narrative has this person fashioned to help him or her survive?" Kathy Dobie is speaking of those that she now writes about but it is about herself and all of us. We all create a story about ourselves but it is up to each of us to decide how true it really is.
This ia great read.
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