Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Hilary Thayer Hamann (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 25, 2010

Self-published in 2003, Hilary Thayer Hamann’s Anthropology of an American Girl touched a nerve among readers, who identified with the sexual and intellectual awakening of its heroine, a young woman on the brink of adulthood.  A moving depiction of the transformative power of first love, Hamann’s first novel follows Eveline Auerbach from her high school years in East Hampton, New York, in the 1970s through her early adulthood in the moneyed, high-pressured Manhattan of the 1980s. 

Centering on Evie’s fragile relationship with her family and her thwarted love affair with Harrison Rourke, a professional boxer, the novel is both a love story and an exploration of the difficulty of finding one’s place in the world.  As Evie surrenders to the dazzling emotional highs of love and the crippling loneliness of heartbreak, she strives to reconcile her identity with the constraints that all relationships—whether those familial or romantic, uplifting to the spirit or quietly detrimental—inherently place on us. Though she stumbles and strains against social conventions, Evie remains a strong yet sensitive observer of the world around her, often finding beauty and meaning in unexpected places. 

Newly edited and revised since its original publication, Anthropology of an American Girl is an extraordinary piece of writing, original in its vision and thrilling in its execution.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, June 2010: Eveline Auerbach, the heroine of Anthropology of an American Girl, observes at one point that "pain becomes its own story." That may be the best way to begin talking about Hilary Thayer Hamann's arresting and provocative coming-of-age novel, set against the twilight years of Eveline's adolescence and the dawn of the 1980s--a decade made all the more infamous by books like American Psycho and Bright Lights, Big City. Hamann's 600-page epic is a worthy and welcome successor to those novels, as it charts the wistful and unsteady course of a girl experiencing the often brutal paradox of being a woman. Eveline is a curious soul. Much of her story unfolds in interior monologues that display how acutely--and how honestly--she observes herself and the men who lay claim to her, and no thought of hers is left unturned: she reflects with great tenderness both the guileless narcissism and the strange liberty of being young. Anthropology of an American Girl is an accomplished and absorbing work of fiction, resonant and romantic in the grandest sense, that will remind you what a great American novel really is. --Anne Bartholomew

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. If publishers could figure out a way to turn crack into a book, it'd read a lot like this. Originally a self-published cult hit in 2003 (since reedited), Hamann's debut traces the sensual, passionate, and lonely interior of a young woman artist growing up in windswept East Hampton at the end of the 1970s. The book begins as a two-pronged tragedy befalls 17-year-old narrator Eveline: her best friend's mother (more maternal than her own) dies, and Eveline is raped by two high school students. Her brutalized interior, exquisitely rendered by Hamann, leads Eveline to a series of self-realizations that bears obvious comparison to that iconic nonconformist Holden Caulfield. The difference, though, is Eveline's femininity threatens to subsume her fragility. Over the course of the book, she falls deeply in love with a stormy figure who helps bring her to disturbing conclusions. Eveline—bent on self-destruction but capable of deep passion, stifled by circumstance but constantly blossoming—is a marvelously complex and tragic figure of disconnection, startlingly real and exposed at all times. (May)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 624 pages
• Publisher: Spiegel & Grau; Revised edition (May 25, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385527144
• ISBN-13: 978-0385527149
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (139 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #304,423 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Hilary Thayer Hamann was born and raised in New York. After her parents divorced, she was shuttled between their respective homes in the Hamptons and the Bronx. She attended New York University, where she received a B.F.A. in Film & Television Production and Dramatic Writing from Tisch School of the Arts, an M.A. in Cinema Studies from the Graduate School of Arts and Science, and a Certificate in Anthropological Filmmaking from NYU's Center for Media, Culture, and History.

Ms. Hamann edited and contributed to Categories--On The Beauty of Physics (2006), an interdisciplinary educational book that was included in Louisiana State University's list of top 25 non-fiction books written since 1950.

As the assistant to Jacques d'Amboise, founder and artistic director of the National Dance Institute, Ms. Hamann produced We Real Cool, a short film based on the Gwendolyn Brooks poem, directed by Academy Award-winning director Emile Ardolino. She also coordinated an international exchange with students from America and the then Soviet Union based on literature, music, and art. She has worked in New York's film, publishing, and entertainment industries, and is co-director of Films on the Haywall, a classic film series in Bridgehampton, New York.

Ms Hamann lives in Manhattan and on Long Island.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

87 of 89 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Book About A Girl April 26, 2010

By Jill I. Shtulman TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

If J.D. Salinger and Jane Austin had a love child, it would likely have been Hilary Thayer Hamann. This is a coming-of-age book, a book about the transformative power of love in an era of deceit, and in many ways, it's a "retro" book.

First, it's instructive to mention what the book is NOT: it's not about grand themes or convoluted messages. It's not about the plots that normally sell -- mysteries, thriller, tabloids themes and the like. What it IS at its core is a book about one girl, Eveline Auberbach, as she navigates her early adulthood. Eveline is set in bold relief against three men who will factor largely in her life: the tortured and self-destructive Jack, her first boyfriend...the moneyed and morally corrupt Mark, who will woo her...and the love of her life, Harrison Rourke who will bring her to the edge of the foreign land of loneliness. The loneliness is defined as "the panic, the sweeping hysteria that comes not when you are without others, but when you are without yourself, adrift."

The anthropological artifacts of America are scattered throughout the book--the khakis, loafers and Lacoste shirts, the songs that defined the times, the cars, the furnishings. But the book is more about emotions than it is about the outer world. Evaline -- who must pick her way through the debris of divorce, death, love, passion, unbridled sexuality, and greed -- says about herself: "I was an American girl; I possessed what our culture valued most -- independence and blind courage...My days were simple, numb and narrow. My impressions collected in layers like generations of rock beneath earth, impacted to form a single idea -- that I was happy."

But IS Evaline happy? At the beginning, her voice is vivid and pure and hopeful. And later? She begins to shut down.... Her voice becomes more staccato and she turns her back on conscious living. She starts to settle with her life and fade into emotional detachment. She REPORTS about the world rather than take pleasure from it; the tone is meant to discomfort the reader and it succeeds. As a result, I found myself skimming for several pages. At one point, Evaline reflects, "I can think only of fog, of being consumed by fog, so much so that it appears as though nothing is out there, but everything is out there, brushing by, inches off. You're powerless to correct your restricted perception, so you surrender to blindness. You survive by touch. You reach to know, reach to feel. You learn to live by sensation...there's no poetry there..."

How Evaline gets her groove back -- how she becomes restored through the healing power of love -- is a journey that I do not wish to spoil for the reader. Suffice to say that she does. One of the weaknesses of the book -- from my perspective -- is that Evaline must play off others to truly be transformed, rather than discovering it alone and for herself. Still, when Evaline muses, "How resourceful to turn a story of achievement into a more familiar one of loss...Had I been working all alone to secure my own failure, to collapse the machine that was made of me?", it becomes evident that her perceptions will lead to resilience and she can and will survive.

One important factor to note: this author originally self-published this book to avoid its commercialization and of losing her own artistic voice. She later totally rewrote the book; I've read the first 20 pages of the original, and the new book is almost completely reworked. This review pertains to the latest version. Read more ›

77 of 85 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Overwrought and Under-edited... June 8, 2010

By Eve

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Wow. After a lot of skimming, groaning, and perseverance I finished this book. I was really looking forward to this one, given all of the rave reviews, and am scratching my head now trying to figure out what the h*ll just happened. First, the good stuff: the book is compulsively readable for the first several hundred pages. After that, it becomes compulsively skimmable.

At 600 pages, it's hard to believe that the entire plot involves the details of our miserable heroine's passive and angst-ridden journey through three relationships (one in high-school, one in college, and one post-college). Towards the beginning of the book, Evie is painted as an independent, thoughtful, tortured outcast (by choice), which I think may be the impetus for comparisons to Holden Caulfield? The problem is that this character does not develop - at all. As the story progresses, Evie seems more and more like a caricature, and an unlikeable one, at that. She is described as irresistible to all men, with her tragic eyes and waif-like appearance. It is mentioned throughout the book that she does not eat and people are constantly expressing concern over her "skin-and-bones" appearance and her pale, translucent skin. Of course, this only makes the men in the book (ALL of them, seemingly!) want to rescue her from herself all the more! And the beauty of it is, she lets them! As far as I could tell, she never actually does anything in the entire book besides bounce from man to man, talking about how tortured she is along the way (if I'm over-using the word in this review, it's only because the sentiment is so over-used in the book). She wallows in her angst over the break-up of a relationship with a (surprise!) tortured, artistic man, Rourke.... Although we never get shown any reason for their transcendent connection, we are told repeatedly that theirs is a deep, tortured, predestined love. Take this description of Rourke's eyes as Evie sits next to him briefly before a school play: "His eyes were black; it was true. Eyes can be called black, but I didn't think eyes could actually be black. Rourke's were a reverberant black, a blackness of conviction, as if they had forfeited subordinate hues by decision, as if they were that way by will. They were the eyes of someone who reads the world in terms of opposition. And yet there was light. I could see where they were susceptible. I could see blind pools where the light hit and bounced back. Then, quick as it came, the light was gone, replaced by a cataract of grave insights" (p. 187). This isn't a quote taken out of context; every page - nay, paragraph - is swollen with overwrought metaphors and pseudo-philosophical musings. It's like writing bad poetry in high school or painting your room black and agonizing over how misunderstood you are - don't we all go through that, to some degree?

Okay then, if that's the case, it could be argued that this book brilliantly captures the melodramatic essence of the transition from adolescence to young-adulthood. I could buy this if the author seemed to have any perspective on this at all. Instead, the book shares the same flaws as the heroine: melodrama, self-indulgent angst, and overwrought metaphors are mistaken for substance and depth. I know people will disagree with my review of this book, and that's okay; I actually didn't hate it or dislike it as much as this review might suggest. I was ultimately so frustrated with both the heroine and the author and the solipsistic nature of it all that "compulsive readability" just couldn't begin to redeem the book. Read more ›

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Over-thought and overwrought June 15, 2010

By E. Jacobs TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Imagine leaving your home every single day with a magnifying glass and a notepad. You have to examine every detail of the front door (for example, the shine of the knob, the grain of the wood) before you open it, and then you must describe it in florid prose. That is exactly how this book goes.

Set in the late 70's and early 80's, the story follows the life of a high school student, Eveline, who is on the cusp of womanhood. For the good points: in places the writing was gorgeous and there were some insights that deserve some consideration. Sadly, the bad points of the book overwhelm these.

I could not agree more with the other reviewers who recommend draconian editing to this book. I hung in there and read every word for the first 40% of the book, at which time I got fed up and skimmed the rest of the way through. There is a kernel of a story here, but it is hidden in a fog of endless detail. We are treated to Eveline's every thought on every subject imaginable, in excruciating detail. Often these "deep" thoughts are translated into eye-rollingly overwrought and stilted dialogue between purported adolescents, who, let's face it, don't often entertain these types of musings, even when on drugs. Further, Eveline herself is not exactly a protagonist that one wants to root for. She is a young woman who makes poor decisions with alarming regularity but luckily has a man to bail her out every time, because she is so hauntingly beautiful.

In summary, this is not a book I would recommend to anyone. With some major editing (of, no joke, at least half of the text), there might be something there. Only fleeting glimpses of some really talented writing and scattered seeds of insights saved this book from getting a one-star review from me.