The Girl Sleuth (Paperback)

by Bobbie Ann Mason (Author) "When I was six or seven I read my first novel-Honey Bunch: Her First Trip to a Big Fair..." (more)
Key Phrases: girl sleuth, girl detective, airline hostess, Nancy Drew, Honey Bunch, Bobbie Ann Mason (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The author of Feather Crowns examines the girl detective in her various guises--including Cherry Ames, Nancy Drew, and Trixie Belden--in a work first published in 1975 recalling a rural youth spent longing for mysteries. Reprint. UP.

Product Details

• Paperback: 145 pages
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press (May 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 082031739X
• ISBN-13: 978-0820317397
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #886,693 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Flashbacks and feminism, May 24, 2000

By	Melissa (USA) - See all my reviews

From Aunt Jane's Girls to Sweet Valley High, series books for girls have been a staple of girls' literary diets. Bobbie Ann Mason (author of "In Country") is one of many who devoured series like The Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew. She looks back at the books with affection and the amused rememberings of adulthood, but also acknowledges some of the faults of the book - especially in matters of racism, stereotyping, bourgeois entitlement and sexism. She also brings some of the lesser-known girl detectives into the spotlight - especially Judy Bolton, a far more satisfying heroine than the rigid, frigid Nancy Drew. If a college course can be taught on Madonna, then this genre definitely deserves study and reflection for its influence on generations of little women.

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Touring The Old Neighborhood, July 25, 2000

By	C. Ebeling "ctlpareader" (PA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Reading The Girl Sleuth was like getting in a car with a friend at the wheel and going back to the neighborhood where we lived from ages 10 - 12. Together we uncovered the probable reasons why my mother and the school librarian disapproved of Nancy Drew and what those series mysteries did for our self images as women. The overt mainstream racism of the earlier editions of the series books is shocking; it gives me some comfort to think that our culture has grown up in the last few decades to understand how very wrong that thinking was. This book was completed in 1975 when Mason was a young post-doc coming off a Nabokov dissertation. It is relatively free of scholarspeak, though the feminism and Freudian references are starkly of their time. It's not dated, however: Mason writes from the heart as well as the mind and this slim book is a timeless good ride.