Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann

'It was confusing, frankly, the way everyone stared at our bodies as they tried to erase the ideas of our bodies from our minds. 'All that was mine for me,' she admits, 'was an excellence at manufacturing feelinggreat feelings of autonomy as ordained by my culture versus conflicting inside ones of loneliness, ambivalence, and confusion.' Evie is painfully aware of her effect on others, but not always sure what to do when that attention throws herself back onto her own thoughts. She belongs to no school clubs, plays no sports or instruments. She is artistic without being especially disciplined or directed. Her divorced parents treat her with benign neglect. She is attractive in a dark, unconventional way, so she draws the gazes of many people but lacks the protective envelope of a group of friends. This is a book that just might stir up dormant emotions from the summer of your own life, thoughts alternately welcome and discomfiting.Įvie, the narrator, is an outsider in her social milieu. If possible, you should read this book in concert with another former American girl, or two, or seven, so you can discuss it as it unfolds. If you were once an American girl, you should read this book.

It is a big fat book, just right for the lengthening days ahead. It manages to be at once languorous and intense, a page-turner that demands to be read slowly, a story bathed in the golden light of Long Island with a dark thrum like an ocean undertow. A perfect summer book, at once languorous and intense, a page-turner.Īnthropology of an American Girl is a perfect summer book.

Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann