Barbara the Slut and Other People
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3.8 • 26 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
“Holmes trains a precise lens on the millennial generation’s mixed bag of manners, mores, and machinations… In [these] beautifully brazen stories, worlds collide in fresh, imaginative ways.” —Elle
A fresh, honest, and darkly funny debut collection about family, friends, and lovers, and the flaws that make us most human.
Fearless, candid, and incredibly funny, Lauren Holmes is a newcomer who writes like a master. She tackles eros and intimacy with a deceptively light touch, a keen awareness of how their nervous systems tangle and sometimes short-circuit, and a genius for revealing our most vulnerable, spirited selves.
In “Desert Hearts,” a woman takes a job selling sex toys in San Francisco rather than embark on the law career she pursued only for the sake of her father. In “Pearl and the Swiss Guy Fall in Love,” a woman realizes she much prefers the company of her pit bull—and herself—to the neurotic foreign fling who won’t decamp from her apartment. In “How Am I Supposed to Talk to You?” a daughter hauls a suitcase of lingerie to Mexico for her flighty, estranged mother to resell there, wondering whether her personal mission—to come out—is worth the same effort. And in “Barbara the Slut,” a young woman with an autistic brother, a Princeton acceptance letter, and a love of sex navigates her high school’s toxic, slut-shaming culture with open eyes.
With heart, sass, and pitch-perfect characters, Barbara the Slut is a head-turning debut from a writer with a limitless career before her.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Holmes presents 10 first-person narratives in this collection, an eminently readable debut from a fresh voice. Use of the m word Millennial is inevitable when describing these stories, as they're filled with young people taking stock of their surroundings with shrugs and resigned sighs at their own diminished expectations. A lab tech at an STD clinic, who is stalling in applying to grad school ("I was thinking I might want to study public health, but I was also thinking I might want to move to the forest and eat berries and mushrooms and hibernate with the bears in the winter"), must act as an unlikely emissary for an unusual patient. A recent law school grad who can't bring herself to practice law, a career path bankrolled by her father, and can't "think of anything that I actually wanted to do" begins working in a sex-toy store. The most ambitious character is the titular Barbara, who is biding her time until she can get to Princeton, trying to persevere in an environment that still punishes her for having both a sex life and a clear-eyed distrust of her high school sexual partners. Holmes writes with ease and humor: there's an underpants scheme, an extreme germaphobe, and even a story from the perspective of a dog. Though there's too much sameness in these stories (the protagonists are mostly interchangeable), it never diminishes the extent of their perception, wit, and liveliness. A wonderful debut.
Customer Reviews
Great read
The short stories were great to read. I wish some of them were longer as I became engrossed in the story.
Simple treasure
Simple pleasure. Smart. Present, wholly relatable and perfect.