I’m Not This Girl by Nina-Marie Gardner
My rating: 3/5 cats
this is a somewhat less polished novel than Sherry and Narcotics, but it is still breathtaking. in the sense that it will completely leave you gasping with its frantic pace and its chronicling of innumerable cigarettes smoked. as a newly back-off-the-wagon smoker (bad girl!), my throat was pleasantly raw while reading this and it added to my enjoyment immensely.
i’m not this girl. i nearly was this girl, in my fresh-from-a-village-in-rhode-island new new yorker phase. i remember quite well what it is like to go out dancing all night and…partake, and then go home, shower, and head right out to work.
i did not last long at that job.
but this captures a lot of that aimless youth thing as lulu bar- and party-hops and engages in itch-scratching emotionless sexual encounters and falls for the wrong men while trying to carve out a place for herself in the shallowest of circumstances.
it is funny and uncomfortable and sad, all at once. she does a great job with displacement, and with that hopeless stasis of the whole early-adulthood self-finding. and, yes—a 9/11 interlude which usually strikes me as gratuitous, but really worked here for me.
so, yeah, check it out, but do also check out Sherry and Narcotics, because that one is great and cutting stuff.
also, this one has an amazing dog named trouble. and i am in love.
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