Customer Reviews

Girl Walks into a Bar: A Memoir

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I normally don't write reviews but just had to when I saw all the negative feedback below. As a 25-year-old, single New Yorker working in the publishing world - I thought this book was dead on with my experiences, fears, thoughts and everything else going on in my life. I don't think the author was trying to make people feel sorry for her (as one reviewer suggested) but rather being very honest about the thoughts in her head. I thought the author described perfectly how the choices and freedom that women have today in terms of career can sometimes be a curse instead of a blessing. I would reccomend this book to anyone who is figuring out what they want to do with their life beacuse if nothing else, it makes you feel like you are not alone.

I started reading this book because I loved the title, AND I could relate - I also worked in the New York media world, recently moved cross-country, and am in my 20s. I've gotten halfway through the book, but I just CANNOT finish it. Forgive me for sending out bad energy with this review, but maybe this will be constructive criticism for Saroyan if she writes a future book. I agree with the reviewer below who wrote that you get the sense that the author is hiding something from you. And that's exactly it! The author hides behind her intellectual, show-offy, wordy style of writing (and thinking). It's as though she's hiding her real feelings behind her sentences, when all the reader wants is to read about the emotional truths, pains, joys, etc.. The author frequently writes as though she's building you up for this great epiphany, but then she deflates the build-up with pseudo-intellectual analyses of her situations and relationships that circle back upon themselves and leave you feeling completely empty. Maybe that was the author's point. But really, as a reader, all you want to say to her is, "Just come out and say it! What are your real feelings?!" And the way she cuts up her sentences with loads of clauses doesn't help the read either. This book had the potential to be a lot more resonant for 20-something career girls, but it ends up reading like the author's own catharsis, which you wonder if she ever really reached.

The questions asked in this book make it worth the read alone, but how they come to be answered, or how they remain unanswered is the thrill of the ride. Discovering that the world you thought was the 'be all end all' is not lays at the heart of "Girl Walks into a Bar." Failure isn't the biggest threat to success, it turns out. Failure of failure is. Saroyan gets that point across better than most. Beautifully written. Gripping to read.

One gets the sense, reading some of these reviews, of a disconnect between expectation and reality. Framed as some breezy, Candace Bushnell-ian bauble, A Girl Walks Into A Bar is, I suppose, a failure. Framed as a work of art--aphoristic, alert, bristling with twenty-eight different levels of intelligence--it's amazing. Saroyan's gift is for a kind of self-consciousness that never descends into navel-gazing, or tail-chasing, and for self-disclosure that never stoops to self-display or cheap confession. A fantastic, and badly misunderstood, book.

I'm a third of the way through this book, and I'm much more sympathetic towards young girls trying to make sense of where they want to go, who they want to be, and so on. It's frightening making career choices. It's horrible to realize you're getting close to what you wanted, only to have a creeping suspicion that it's not what it's cracked up to be.
This is not destined to be a great classic, but it goes a long way in helping the parents of smart girls who should seamlessly slide into "a life," that it ain't that easy. It was so much easier for a 1967 graduate!

Saroyan writes well but blandly, much in the style of the magazines she's worked for. Her story is one I'd rather have heard over cocktails than reading a whole book about--it's practically the poster child for the "yeah, but who cares?" syndrome of people writing memoirs who don't have much more to write about than anyone else. Not saying she's terribly boring--she isn't--but there's nothing special here that made me want to recommend it.

This book was a frustrating read because I oftentimes related to what Saroyan was discussing (especially her detailed exploration about how we grow apart from good friends as we get older) but more often I just wanted to set the book down and never pick it up again. After a while, I just was tired of hearing about her exploits with this person, or that boy, or this friend. The book felt to me like the kind of conversations you have with your friends after a couple of beers: You think that you are being quite deep and insightful, and sometimes you are, but more often you are talking just to hear the sound of your own voice.

This book is a never-ending flowery journal entry. As a woman of 25, I understand much of what Saroyan is trying to get across. The pressures a woman in her 20s encounters come across well. Unfortunately, one has to wade through a poorly written, self-involved tribute to a young woman's own inside jokes and frequently revolving groups of friends. There are many other books out there that accomplish this book's aim without making the reader suffer so much. Saroyan has promise, but this book does not fulfill it. This is a book written for a good friend, who will sit through your rambling until you get to a point because they love you. I, however, am not interested in the souvenirs Saroyan bought at Mt. Rushmore.

I devoured this book in a weekend. It's rambling, repetitive, and vague, but it reads like an emotional letter from a friend. Although the book needed better editing, the author has captured what it is like to grow up as a woman today. I related to so many of her experiences: the disappointment in a career path, the moves across country, the lack of family support, the unsatisfying and flaky romances, the lost friendship, the search for a social group, the men who never grow up. I especially liked the section on the Bounty boys, a group of men the author hung out with for a time in L.A. It's not all bad news, as she does find a satisfactory group of friends to hang out with, but it does end with a lot of questions still unanswered. For women who weathered a lot of turmoil in their twenties to find themselves on firmer ground but still searching in their thirties, this is a good read. I think the subject matter could have been handled with more insight by a better writer, but I think Saroyan deserves credit for attempting this chronicle of the modern woman's experience.

This is a fantastic early memoir that reads like a witty coming-of-age novel -- I couldn't put it down. At the same time, Strawberry Saroyan's self-reflection provides rare access into a very interesting person as well as into a very specific slice of society. I would totally recommend curling up with this book!