Green Girl
by:
Kate Zambreno (author)
Green Girl is the Bell Jar for today -- an existential novel about Ruth, a young American in London, kin to Jean Seberg gamines and contemporary celebutantes. Ruth works a string of meaningless jobs: perfume spritzer at a department store she calls Horrid's, clothes-folder, and a shop-girl at a...
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Green Girl is the Bell Jar for today -- an existential novel about Ruth, a young American in London, kin to Jean Seberg gamines and contemporary celebutantes. Ruth works a string of meaningless jobs: perfume spritzer at a department store she calls Horrid's, clothes-folder, and a shop-girl at a sex shop. Ruth is looked at constantly-- something she craves and abhors. She is followed by a mysterious narrator, the voice equally violent and maternal. Ruth and her toxic friend, Agnes, are obsessed with cosmetics and fashion and film, with boys, with themselves, and with each other. Green Girl is about that important and frightening and exhilarating period of being adrift and screwing up, a time when drunken hook-ups and infatuations, nervous breakdowns, and ecstatic epiphanies are the order of the day. Named a best book of 2011 by Roxane Gay and Dennis Cooper. Chosen as a finalist for the 2012 The Morning News' Tournament of Books.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780983022633 (0983022631)
Publish date: October 10th 2011
Publisher: Emergency Press
Pages no: 251
Edition language: English
A devasting prose-poem on the lack of identity that can infect one's early 20s. I loved it. Worth reading for the narrative voice alone. Also, I should mention that I had no intention of actually reading this book when I did. But glancing at the first few pages sucked me right in and then I coul...
A difficult book to discuss. I spent over 1000 words at RB trying to sum up my thoughts and come to a ratings consensus. Mostly, I just feel numb - like when listening to "Avalanche" by Ryan Adams and wanting to just, exactly as that song's protagonist does: "fall apart in the avalanche, fade out ...