The Girls' Almanac [Paperback]

Emily Franklin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 26, 2006

The Girls' Almanac chronicles the lives of Jenna and Lucy—two thirty-something women who desperately long for a true friend—as well as the lives of the women and men who have touched them: friends, lovers, parents, and neighbors. Set across the Northeast—through suburban neighborhoods, preppy camps, island resorts, and Ivy League colleges—as well as far flung locales like Ecuador and Iceland, The Girls' Almanac traces the friendships of women willing to risk both self-consciousness and intimacy, loss and betrayal, in pursuit of a proper best friend. Exploring the fascinating closeness and distance that female friendships encompass, The Girls' Almanac reveals the map of Jenna and Lucy's interconnected lives, and ultimately their pathways to each other.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A weblike illustration mapping the relationships of 30 characters kicks off Franklin's (Liner Notes) collection of interconnected short stories that run the gamut from half-baked to heartbreaking. The latter includes the first story, "Early Girls," about Lucy, who mourns her dead fiancé as she helps prepare for her mother's second wedding. Lucy's friends Jenna, who finds solace in baking, and Gabrielle, a doctor struggling with the idea of motherhood, have rough goes of it in other stories. Franklin has a harder time with male characters, as in "Community Service," in which a teacher who works at a school for "troubled teens" breaks down while supervising his students on a community service outing. Franklin's smart prose sees her characters through rites of passage including first sexual encounters, marriage and motherhood, as well as difficulties such as terminal illness, infidelity and widowhood. Highlights include "Kindling," a story of two roommates and their communal living situation; "A Map of the Area," set in an upscale hippie retreat; and "The Math of the Fourth Child," about two women trying to predict the future of a yet-to-be-conceived child. A handful of shorter pieces feel unfinished, but there are enough thought-provoking stories to pull readers through. (Oct.)
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Review

“Reading The Girls’ Almanac is like going on an exotic trip with your dearest friends.” (Lisa Tucker, author of The Song Reader and Shout Down the Moon )

“Unnervingly perceptive and moving…Franklin has a remarkable talent for diving to the heart of things.” (Lewis Robinson, Whiting Award author of Officer Friendly and Other Stories )

“Emily Franklin writes beautifully of the essential, pivotal moments in women’s lives.” (Heidi Jon Schmidt, author of The Rose Thieves, Darling? and The Bride of Catastrophe )

“After I finished these stories, I found myself missing the women who populated them. They’d come to feel like closegirlfriends.” (Judith Claire Mitchell, author of The Last Day of the War )

“Emily Franklin’s stories…and her great attention to detail seems an intricate form of nostalgia.” (Lily King, author of The Pleasing Hour )

“Lovely…snapshots of women which…allow us to see their lives unfold as if we’re leafing through a photoalbum.” (Laura Zigman, author of Animal Husbandry and Her )

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (September 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006087340X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060873400
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,864,309 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Emily Franklin is the author of Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 Mom, 4 Kids, and 102 Recipes. One part David Sedaris, one part Julia Child, this food memoir has over one hundred original recipes and funny, poignant stories about parenting. Emily is a former chef.

She is also the author of two adult novels, The Girls' Almanac and Liner Notes and more than a dozen books for young adults including the critically-acclaimed seven book fiction series for teens, The Principles of Love. Other young adult books include The Other Half of Me the Chalet Girls series, and At Face Value, a retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac.

She edited the anthologies It's a Wonderful Lie: 26 Truths about Life in Your Twenties and How to Spell Chanukah: 18 Writers Celebrate 8 Nights of Lights. She is co-editor of Before: Short Stories about Pregnancy from Our Top Writers.

Emily writes regularly about food and parenting for national magazines and newspapers and her work has been published in numerous literary magazines.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If considered a series of short stories, offers an interesting glimpse into the lives of a group of interconnected women, November 2, 2006

By 

Beth Cholette "doctor_beth" (Upstate NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Girls' Almanac (Paperback)

When I started this book, I thought it would be something I would like: the first character we meet, Lucy, is interesting and sympathetic, and her relationship with her mother seems relatable and universal. By the second chapter, however, the adult Lucy is gone, and the reader is suddenly catapulted back into Lucy's adolescent years. If the time change had been the only issue, this book might have still worked for me, but by the third chapter, Lucy is gone completely, and two new characters, Andrea and Gabrielle, are introduced. The whole book continues this way, jumping back and forth through time as well as switching amongst characters. I found it very difficult to keep the various players straight, especially since you never know whether someone you meet will appear again later or just has a brief role; the entire effect is extremely confusing. At the beginning of the book, there is a diagram showing the various interconnections between characters, but frankly, when I'm reading a novel, I don't want to feel like I have to work in order to keep up--having to constantly flip back to the front made this feel more like a textbook than fiction.

I think the idea of interrelated women's lives is a good one, but this novel reads more like a collection of short stories. I might recommend it to a female friend with more patience than I had for sorting through this complicated storyline.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars profound look at living not just surviving life, September 30, 2006

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Girls' Almanac (Paperback)

Though she still mourns the sudden death of her fiancé, Lucy tries to get on with her life though her mom remarrying makes it more difficult. Jenna, a baker, loves her vocation more than people so when she is not baking she feels lonely and lost. Her mother raised her after her parents divorced, but Gabrielle the doctor only recently has been able to reconcile with her father as both regret how much they lost.

As these three thirty something lonely women become friends, they also begin to meet other people, have boyfriends, and grow closer to their parents. Each realizes how debilitating being alone truly is, but with one another that should not happen again no matter what curve ball life pitches at them.

Overall this astute character study collection is more a series of relational vignettes. Readers will enjoy the growth of the three dimensional females when something goes awry or is perceived as going wrong; on the other hand the two dimensional males start out pathetic and remain pathetic. The three amigas learn that everyone needs someone when life turns rough. Unwanted poetry aside, Emily Franklin provides a profound look at living not just surviving life.

Harriet Klausner

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, March 17, 2007

By 

Bearette24 (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Girls' Almanac (Paperback)

I thought this book was better than the other reviews implied. True, the book is disjointed, and seems more like a collection of short stories than a novel. But there's a term for that - "novel in stories." It is what it is.

I agree with the Amazon reviewer who said some of the shorter stories (a couple were just two pages each) felt undeveloped. And it was disconcerting to get attached to one character, and have that character disappear until later.

But the book as a whole was an interesting meditation on interconnectedness. It enables you to see a single character from several different perspectives. For example, a dead fiance cheated on his fiancee before he died, and the fiancee doesn't know he cheated, but the reader does. It makes the picture of a character seem fuller.

If you can get past the book's departure from traditional narrative rules, it's worth checking out.