Girls! Girls! Girls! [Paperback]

Claire Zulkey (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0972763619 | ISBN-13: 978-0972763615 | Publication Date: January 1, 2004

As the title of this book should indicate, Claire Zulkey doesn't really care about gender stereotypes or the unspoken and sensitive rules of chick lit. After all, this book is named after a strip club slogan (and Motley Crue song). Claire Zulkey wants you to know that literary humor from and about women doesn't have to involve menstrual issues, floods of tears, retail therapy, over-consumption of tequila-based drinks, bonbon binging, or even the phrase "You go, girl!" In fact, even men enjoy her humor.

Girls! Girls! Girls!, Zulkey's first book for So New Media, features sixteen short pieces that explore a variety of hard-hitting issues, such as Playboy Bunnies, spam email, women in Major League Baseball, shower caddies, and of course, the startling expose "Fat: The New Thin." Girls! Girls! Girls! encompasses genres from short story, interview, letter, and list, all in one fell, and very witty, swoop.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

In this very brief book of stories and fictional humor pieces, Zulkey imagines a new kind of chick lit, one where well-earned laughs and fierce satire dethrone cheesy dialogue and lengthy laments about not having any shoes to match a particular outfit. The opening vignette, "Fat: The New Thin," tells the tale of a fashion industry gone suddenly sane: tired of waifs, Ralph and Tommy and Donatella begin singing the praises of fat, leaving supermodels everywhere pigging out in a vain attempt to fit a new construction of femininity. Later, Zulkey imagines herself as one of Hef's girlfriends, the smart one with whom Hef likes to watch Fellini movies. Wry wit carries most of these pieces, though a few listlike entries fall flat and seem out of place amid the zany fictional worlds created in the more narrative stories. Here's hoping that Zulkey's omnipresence on the Web (she runs the popular zulkey.com and frequently appears at McSweeney's Internet Tendency) will translate to print readers; this book deserves them. Leon Wagner
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Claire Zulkey's writing is the result of growing up in the Midwest, going to college on the East Coast, reading a lot of David Sedaris, and cheering for an unpopular baseball team. Her work has appeared in print in the Chicago Tribune, online at McSweeney's Internet Tendency, on stage at Second City, and over the airwaves on NPR.

Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: So New Media (January 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0972763619
• ISBN-13: 978-0972763615
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,977,287 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read Zulkey now so you can brag about it when she's famous., January 17, 2004

By 

Leonard Pierce (Chicago, IL, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girls! Girls! Girls! (Paperback)

Mark my words. Go ahead, mark them, right now. I'll wait.

Okay, have you marked them? Good. Here they are. Claire Zulkey is the short humor superstar of tomorrow. She is also a humor semi-superstar of today, and is short. The point is, she has written this delightful book, containing many of my favorite pieces, and you will like it if your sense of humor is high and your tolerance for tedious gender stereotypes is low. She's also one of the nicest authors you'll ever go to a baseball game with.

Funny, insightful, clever, and with a snazzy-looking cover, "Girls! Girls! Girls!" will make you happier than most books its shape. Isn't that worth ten bones?

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book That Everyone Should Purchase, Particularly You!, January 21, 2004

By 

Steven T Delahoyde (Iowa City, IA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girls! Girls! Girls! (Paperback)

You know that pile of pink-colored books all clumped together on a side shelf at Borders or Barnes & Nobel? The ones where you're apt to see titles like "Chocolate and Me: A Single Girl's Love Affair" or "The Dateless Model"? Well, this book, by Claire Zulkey, kind of vaguely looks like those sorts of books, but it's anything but. It's one of those kinds of books that you pick up at the store, not really sure what it's about right away, take it home on a whim, and then fall madly and deeply in love with it. It's the kind of book where you can keep coming back to it, again and again, and re-read little passages, without seeming like a troubled bibliophile. It's the kind of book that has light and breezy pieces that are far wittier and more intelligent than anything you could possibly ever come up with, yet it speaks to you like an old friend. In short, this is the kind of book that looks like those other kinds, the ones at Borders and Barnes & Nobel, yet unlike them, it isn't at all disposable. Past the times spent with a pile of books, while relaxing on a beach, this one will be the one that lasts, that sticks in your collection for a long, long time.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars finally, a book by a chick that isn't chick lit, February 15, 2004

By 

Jennifer Amey (toronto) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girls! Girls! Girls! (Paperback)

a friend of mine wrote a novel, met with an agent. the agent basically told her that if she wants to get published, she should really be writing the kind of book she loathes: chick lit. so it is indeed refreshing to see a book by an all-x-chromosomes-all-the-time kind of writer that doesn't bother with either the "I must get married or I will die" stereotype, or the stupid notion that "liberation" means cheap sex with some greaseball and buying lots of shoes.

so thank you Claire, both for being funny as hell and for making fun of the people who deserve to get made fun of.