Book Review: Anthropology of an American Girl

Let us begin with the NPR book review, and then we can end with my version of a book review.

A Beguiling Book Debuts For The Second Time
by JESSA CRISPIN

May 26, 2010
Bloated. Self-indulgent. Clichéd. These are the common traps of self-published books, those that never make it into the hands of a gimlet-eyed editor, someone willing to sacrifice pretty prose for the sake of the overall work. In 2003, Hilary Thayer Hamann published her novel Anthropology of an American Girl through her own press. It became something of a sleeper success, and seven years later, it is now being reprinted by the Random House imprint Spiegel & Grau. Clocking in at 624 pages and covering a few years in the life of teenager Eveline Auerbach in closeup detail, it suffers from all of the problems that can befall the self-published.
And yet there is something so beguiling, so charming about the book. At first you might reject it like a sugary pop song, but you will find yourself singing along a few days later. Anthropology is so very, very long, and yet it continues to beckon after you think you've finished with it. It becomes ensnared in that Twilight-esque trap of having every male character inexplicably and compulsively in love with its heroine, and yet her reveries on teenage love and lust are so authentic, you don't lose your patience.
It's Eveline's voice — equal parts pretentious and poetic, bratty and poignant, wise and naive — that saves the book. It captures exactly the thought processes of an introspective teenage girl. Her worldview is sharp and dead-on. On seeing her absent father at graduation: "It depressed me somewhat to be faced with my DNA like that." On femininity: "Girls are truly game as soldiers, with the brave things they do to their bodies and the harsh conditions they are able to tolerate." On being a teenage girl: "When you're fourteen, pretty much everything puts you in a difficult predicament."
Evie doesn't do much — she joins drama club, she falls in love, she outgrows high school friends — but her dry wit and keen sense of observation make her a fine companion. Likewise, Anthropology isn't a masterpiece, but it is addictive reading. Hamann inhabits the skin of a teenage girl so accurately, so effortlessly, it's a bit of a relief she has found her way into the book world. (Six-hundred-page epics about the inner lives of teenage girls are not generally considered marketable, unless there's a vampire involved.) If Hamann can accomplish this on her own, it'll be amazing to see what she can do with a little help.

Ok, now it’s my turn. With that kind of intriguing and subtly seductive review, what budding, new book club wouldn’t choose this book as their inaugural selection? Well, the book club I am in did chose this as our first read, and we were sorely disappointed.
The first three sentences of the NPR review nailed this book: bloated, self-indulgent, and clichéd are all adjectives that describe this book precisely. The book is a long-winded, verbose piece of work. Some of the ladies in the book club weren’t even sure if the book had an editor. Yes, the protagonist uses flowery speech and paragraphs loaded with metaphors. And yes, Eveline’s voice, her voice is bratty, ego-centric, and most definitely pretentious. She has very few, if any redeeming qualities, yet every male in the book falls madly for her, it’s utterly inexplicable. That is the one part of this book that is similar to Twilight, as Bella also has limited endearing qualities, yet two amazing guys fall deeply in love with her, reasons unknown. Evie’s principal issue is that the man she is head over heels for has left, I guess that is also a commonality with Bella. I get it, as a teenage girl, or young twenty-something, love lost is a major gloom cloud looming over your world. Evie becomes excessively mournful, somber, and self-loathing.

As for the length of the book, the NPR review states that the pages beckon you despite its wordiness. I disagree. It was a struggle for me to get through this book. I do not see a need for it to exceed 400 pages.

I will switch gears and end on the positives. Evie does experience a broken heart, and I think that is something we can all relate to. I remember having thoughts that I couldn’t imagine my life without this person or that person (the difference between Evie and myself is that I moved on and she remains stagnant in her miserable funk). So the book does have a few aspects that one can relate to.
The best part of the book for me involved the funeral that took place. I have attached below an excerpt that was moving to me, I believe this is where Hamann is poetic and introspective and provocative, and I am somewhat saddened that the book in its entirety wasn’t this moving and romantic. This was the most thought provoking portion of the book, and I am content knowing that at least some part of this book was worth reading. **Spoiler alert: See below for an excerpt from the funeral, if you haven’t read the book and plan on reading it this will reveal part of the story.**

Hamann, Hilary Thayer. Anthropology of an American Girl. Constable & Robinson Limited, 2011.