Yeefan, can you set up a link so we can buy it through digs?

Is anyone still interested in the bookclub? There haven't been any responses here.

I'm not sure how to link to Amazon without it being logged in on my own account, so I guess I would just suggest buying it through the digs shop page for now.

(edited because my link didn't quite work!)

I'll order the book today.. hey, just out of curiosity: what was the book that came close to the winner?

edited because I had to take a benadryl and it's seriously affecting me..

Here's the link for the next book:
http://www.digsmagazine.com/shop_bookstore.htm#bookclub

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Originally posted by Gem:
I have this horrible habit of forgetting major thoughts and impressions within weeks of finishing a book (mostly since I've usually started another right after), so I think I'm gonna do what my husband tried on another board. He did chapter by chapter analysis posts as he read the book. I think I'm gonna do that in Notepad and post the posts as soon as we're allowed. I can't wait to start reading the book, but I gotta finish the one I'm reading first. So many books, so little time...

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During the beginning of the book, I really realted to Mary. Her decriptions of her crush on John Cleary were oh-so-accurate. They really reminded me of my adolescent crushes. I also thought the interactions between Mary and her girlfriends to be dead-on. This portion of the book sounded like pages from a teen's diary, or mine when I was about 14. However, when Mary starts hanging out with the surfer boys, and doing lots of drugs, I really stopped feeling connected. The story no longer related to me. Which made me wonder, do we as readers have different expectations of memoirs than our expectations of fiction. I think if Mary was a fictional character I might have been able to get more into it, but because she was a real person I felt that because we were so different, her story was less engaging to me. What about you guys?

I also wanted to know more throughout the story. Was Mary raped at age seven (this was very vaugely hinted at, but never explained)? And what about the breakup and and makeup of her parents? Is this stuff covered in her other book, The Liar's Club? Should Karr have explained it anyway?

I think I do have different expectations when reading a memoir than when reading fiction; with memoirs, since the author IS the main character, I definitely feel judgemental towards them in a way that I don't with fictional works. Like, the fact that the teenaged Mary seems pretty damn pretentious annoyed me in a way that I don't think a fictional Mary would have.

I should clarify about what I liked about the interaction with her friends- I liked the younger Mary, and felt very connected to her in that way. When she hung out with the neighbor girl (I am blanking on her name), and the kissing scene in the garage felt very realistic to me. In fact, I was picturing some of my old junior high school friends, and my old neighborhood when I was reading this part of the book.

However, as soon she started hanging out with Meredith, and then later with the surf crowd, Mary started seeming more pretentious and less relatable to me.

One part I thought seemed really strange to me was the long scene in the nightclub at the very end. Why was this particular scene given so much attention? I'm still trying to figure it out. It was gruesome and disturbing, and you really just want to shake Mary out of it and tell her to stop being so dumb. But it didn't seem to me to be more important than some of the other aspects of this time in her life that were more glossed over (like her family life).

Concerning the discussion about fiction versus memoirs - I felt that this book was written more like a story, so if you didn't really know this was an autobiograhpy you could totally buy the Mary character. And in a way she is playing a character, we don't know how accurate her memories are and how much of it is how she wants to remember it.

I really did feel less interested/connected once she became a teen. I soon grew bored and couldn't wait to finish the book.

I wanted to know more detail and more of her feelings about some of the things in the book. Some incidents that are just given a passing mention (rape, suicide, relations w/ her family, etc) were the most interesting for me, and the less interesting things for me (drugs, days at the beach) were given more detail. But thats just my interest and tastes, I suppose. I prefer the more emotional aspects of a story.

I thought it sort of fell apart at the end. Like the author just grew tired of writing and decided to end it. The long scene at the night club confused me and I had to reread it a few times to understand what was happening (maybe the feeling of confusion was her intention?).

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Originally posted by rumours78:
I completely either missed the rape or just don't remember, since it has been a while since I read it!

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I found it weird that so much focus is put on her sexuality, yet so little is said about this rape. This is especially true in the scene after her mom got abducted and is finally back home (around page 65)

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...
-"If it had been one of you girls, even the law couldn't have saved him."

This last comment seemed odd, for while Lecia's body always garnered looks in public, the thought that I might warrant sexual attention- even in the warped form Dutch's took- was new.
...

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Doesn't she remember being aggressed? Maybe she repressed this event into her memory, but then why does she mention it later? (page 182)

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... hopping the rubber he winds up using will numb his smark dick from knowing that some brute stole your cherry

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I found that quite confusing.

I would think that this would bear some mention later in her life. Instead she ignores it as if it never happened and never affected her.

Strange.

I've been thinking a lot about the aspects of Mary's life that are hinted at and never explored. I found this passage (not sure what page, I got it off the discussion question website), "Kids in distressed families are great repositories of silence and carry in their bodies whole arctic wastelands of words not to be uttered, stories not to be told." So I think that Mary's glossing over stories of rape, suicide, etc., directly relates to her living in a distressed family.

I was reading some of my old diary entries from the 7th and 8th grade last weekend, and I found a lot of this in myself too. I gloss over some of the more important, large issue things. (Mom and Dad are fighting again. They're going to get divorced. And then I ramble on for six pages about wanting to eat with the cool kids, and various other lunch hour politics). I think kids are also wrapped up in themselves a lot, so talking about their family or their past just isn't as interesting as what they did that weekend.