Girls Only
Sleepovers, Squabbles, Tuna Fish, and Other Facts of Family Life
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
"What I learned from my father was the boys' lesson of dealing in the world -- trust no one and win the first time. What I learned from my mother was the girls' lesson -- trust no one and win the first time, but just in case you don't, come home, eat something, talk about it, have a drink, cry a little, then go back out there and try again."
Armed with these family tenets, Alex Witchel goes soul-searching and shopping with the ever-present help of her mother, Barbara, the "human Swiss Army knife who can do it all," and her sister, Phoebe, Alex's perpetual rival and best friend. These three form a family within a family, and with a passionate unity they offer each other sharp, witty, and (occasionally exasperating) insights on everything from men, pedicures, and careers to sibling rivalry, the challenges of stepparenting, and the pains of aging and loss.
Insightful, poignant, and hilarious by turns, Girls Only is a memoir that celebrates the one thing that remains "for women only"...mother/daughter/sister love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New York Times reporter Witchel's aptly titled book is based on a series of previously published Times articles exploring relationships between and among the women in her family (her mother, her younger sister and herself), their extended family and New York City. With an urbane and sardonic eye, she dissects the personalities, customs, Judaism and history of her family from the perspective of an about-to-be-40-year-old who still wants to believe, deep down, that Mommy knows best. Aspiring with only partial success to a Nora Ephron-like barbed matter-of-factness in this combination of memoir and reportage, Witchel occasionally leaves the reader feeling claustrophobic, desperate to throw open a window for air beyond Manhattan hotel weekends, restaurants and department stores. Still, her candor can be affecting, particularly in the final chapter, about the deaths of her grandmothers. And she occasionally shows a flair for genuine comedy, as in the hilarious chapter about sex: she brings her mother--a longtime Star Trek fan--to an interview with William Shatner; her mother and "Captain Kirk" hit it off, and he dazzles both women by kissing Witchel's mother three times on the mouth.
