The Dirty Girls Social Club: A Novel [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez (Author, Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2003

A vibrant and absorbing novel of six friends--each an unforgettable Latina in her late twenties--and the complications and triumphs in their lives

As soon as it was written, The Dirty Girls Social Club began turning heads. The Chicago Tribune reported that the book "set off a bidding frenzy" among publishers. The Associated Press reported that "even people running the copy machines at major publishing houses just had to read The Dirty Girls Social Club."

It’s no wonder the media is all in a whirl. In this heartfelt and absorbing novel, Valdes-Rodriguez opens up the lives of six upwardly mobile Latina friends in their late 20’s. These women, who come from widely varied backgrounds, meet at Boston University and, after graduating, reunite every six months to share their stories. Facing the complications and pressures of everyday lives, the Social Club offers a chance to meet regularly, dish, dine, and help each other over the bumpy course of life and love.

Filled with humor, drama, and the redemptive power of friendship, The Dirty Girls Social Club promises to be one of the most talked-about books of the year.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Dirty Girls Social Club closely resembles Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale: a handful of young women seek real love and job satisfaction. Unlike McMillan, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez has completely thrown out any literary pretensions whatsoever, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Dirty Girls is a fun, easy, ultimately charming read, not least because the girls themselves are so appealing. Six Latina women become fast friends at Boston University and thereafter meet as a group every few months. Now in their late twenties, they're each on the cusp of the life they want. The novel is narrated in turn by each woman. Feisty Lauren has a column at the Boston Globe, but can't help falling for losers; ghetto-elegant Usnavys is trying to find a man to match her own earning power and expensive tastes; uptight Rebecca is a successful magazine publisher and an unsuccessful wife; beautiful TV anchor Elizabeth has a secret; Sara leads a Martha-Stewart-perfect life as a homemaker; and Amber is a hopeful rock musician in L.A.

The novel works because Valdes-Rodriguez has compassion for her characters; each is faulted, but none is culpable. She also has an eye for the telling detail, as when Rebecca tries to befriend her white husband's stuffy family: "His sister took step classes with me and we shopped for clothes together on Newbury Street and went to the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum one afternoon with Au Bon Pain sandwiches in our handbags." Something about those sandwiches makes the whole enterprise seem more poignant. On the down side, Valdes-Rodriguez is so eager to make things work out for her ladies, her writing sometimes beggars belief. Men actually say things like "Swear to me you're happily married, and I'll stop pursuing you." Yes, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is, in fact, the Latina Terry McMillan. That is, if McMillan were a slighty guiltier pleasure. --Claire Dederer --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Valdes-Rodriguez's debut novel delivers on the promise of its sexy title, offering six lively, irreverent characters: the sucias ("dirty girls" in Spanish), who have been friends since college and get together twice a year to catch up. The book opens at just such a meeting, six years after they've graduated from Boston University, and takes us through an eventful year in their late 20-something lives. This diverse group of women defies stereotypes. There's reserved, conservative Rebecca, founder and editor of a magazine for Latina women, whose marriage to a preppy, Marxist theory-spouting academic is on the rocks; Sara, a full-time mom in Brookline, from a rich Cuban-Jewish family and married to an abusive husband; Usnavys, ambitious and entertainingly materialistic, who's an executive with United Way; Amber, a struggling singer and guitarist; Elizabeth, host of a Boston morning TV show and a born-again Christian; and Lauren, a feisty, hard-drinking newspaper columnist, half Cuban and "half white trash." The book addresses serious questions-prejudice, the difficulty of winning respect from Latino men-but balances them with enough budding (and dying) romances and descriptions of clothing and decor to satisfy any chick lit fan. The lively, humorous writing is peppered with Spanglish and attitude (watching Usnavys approach their meeting place, Lauren says, "Look at her. She just slid up to the curb out front in her silver BMW sedan.... She's on her cell phone. Wait, take two: She's on her itsy-bitsy cell phone. It gets smaller every time I see her. Or maybe she gets bigger, I can't tell. Girl loves her food.") This is a fun, irresistible debut.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio; Abridged edition (May 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559278773
• ISBN-13: 978-1559278775
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (164 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,997,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Grab an InStyle instead, June 9, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Dirty Girls Social Club: A Novel (Hardcover)

I feel awful doing this, because there is such a shortage of Latino literature on the market that it hurts to slam anything out there, even if it's bad. "The Dirty Girls' Social Club" was just that - bad. I picked it up based on a review calling it good beach reading on my vacation, grabbed a hat and some sunscreen, and wasted a few hours.

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez wrote her book with an admirable idea in mind - portray Latina women as strong, diverse people with interests and goals other than those portrayed by mainstream media. However, she sorely fails in reaching her own lofty goal. Her main character, Lauren, is without a doubt the most unsympathetic charater I have ever had the misfortune to read. The premise surrounding Rebecca's story was just ridiculous (I wish I could find someone willing to just throw a one million dollar check at me after one meeting!), as were the circumstances surrounding Sara's spousal abuse. Usnavys was just plain ludicrous, inside and out, and completely fell into the money-hungry, label-seeking sterotype that many people have of Latin women.

The most compelling parts of the story, while still having their roots mired in the same unbelievable muck as Sara's, were Elizabeth's. She's also, ironically enough, the most sorely underused character in the book, and the only one I would have liked to see more of. However, it would have been nice if Valdes-Rodriguez remembered that Boston, for all of its surface conservativeness, is actually more liberal than the story allowed it to be, especially with the large Gothic presence in the colleges.

As a Latina myself, I couldn't imagine sitting through this book again, and am SO not looking forward to the movie. Technically, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is a good writer. I'm not convinced, by this offering anyway, that she has what it takes to be a great author.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ridiculous stereotypical trash, May 13, 2004

By 

MightyMouse (Astoria, New York United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dirty Girls Social Club: A Novel (Paperback)

I cannot believe that St. Martin's actually shelled out as much money as they did for this trivial 'work'. Maybe one day, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez will be a good author, but this offering doesn't show that.
The characters in this book, especially Usnavys, despite Valdes-Rodriguez's efforts, feed into every stereotype Americans have of Latin-American women. Her obsession with labels, her need for a propertied and rich man, all sound like the type of money-grubbing, bling-bling wearing hoochie mama that people have labeled us as.
I didn't pick this book up looking for an intellectual read at all--on the contrary, I was looking for something light and fun to unwind after finals last semester. What I got was a tightening in my gut thinking that this book has a four-star rating on Amazon while it's perpetuating every negative thing that people have to say about Latinas.
The writing itself also drove me bonkers. Valdes-Rodriguez has a choppy style that does this already clunking plot a huge disservice.
I'll never understand what drove the bidding war that resulted in the publication of this book, but I can do one thing to make myself feel better for falling for the hype...I can get my money back. I'd stay far, far away from this wanna-be Sandra Cisneros if I were you.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Shallow, May 3, 2003

By 

"sbrill99" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dirty Girls Social Club: A Novel (Hardcover)

I was so looking forward to this book after reading about the bidding war and the movie rights, but unfortunately it doesn't live up to the hype.

The characters, six Hispanic girl friends in their late 20s, don't have any depth to them. The dialogue sounds forced. They read as representatives of whatever ethnic group they happen to be from, and not as characters unto themselves. In good books, the characters take on a life of their own, but that just doesn't happen here. One character is so out there (Amber), it's just silly.

Overall, I just wasn't convinced.