Other Girls [Hardcover]

Diane Ayres (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2002

OTHER GIRLS BY DIANE AYRES (KENSINGTON, MAY 2002, ISBN: 0758201117) What really goes on behind the ivy-covered walls of a women's college? Welcome to the complicated life of Elizabeth Breedlove, a frosh at Willard College for Women. Her world is suddenly filled with lesbian vampires, lovesick professors, swashbuckling fencers, premature ejaculators, incarcerated therapists, supermodels, rapists, feminists, existentialists and, at long last, lovers. With OTHER GIRLS, debut novelist DIANE AYRES transports readers to a picturesque, cigarette-smoke-hazy academia where an unlikely love triangle -- or is it a quadrangle? -- is about to turn life at one of America's most elite women's colleges upside down.

Weaving a tangled, colorful web of young and intense emotion, Ayres tells a seductive story about the pain of love and the burdens of growing up that evokes Donna Tartt's A Secret History, the academic romps of Robertson Davies and David Lodge, and even the work of J.D. Salinger. Smart, engrossing, hilariously literate and frighteningly accurate, OTHER GIRLS is set in the exclusive -- and currently endangered -- world of women's colleges. But its timeless narrative and startlingly human characters make it an equal opportunity page-turner about coming of age. Or, in the words of one early reviewer from OUT Magazine, "This debut novel from Diane Ayres is a frothy good time, packed with sex, seduction, betrayal, revenge, and a healthy addiction to midnight poker. We've heard this girls' school high jinks tale before, but it's rarely been this much good plain fun."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Ayres's debut novel, gorgeous Elizabeth Breedlove, a first-year student in the class of 1978 at Willard College for Women, is a tough girl with a soft center. Upperclasswoman Pip Collier, fresh from an affair with her African-American feminist professor and hot and heavy with her androgynous roommate, Dusie Hertz who is Elizabeth's official "Big Sister" becomes fascinated by Elizabeth, much to Dusie's dismay. Elizabeth, a reformed "man-eater," responds in kind, and their love begins with a "bodice-ripping ban-the-book kind of lesbian lust." Painting a picture of the women's college as a breeding ground for lesbian sex and failing to chronicle the emotional challenges Elizabeth might experience in her journey toward self-discovery, the author becomes sidetracked by stereotypes and clich‚s: there's the predatory professor, the Marine who rapes a lesbian to teach her a lesson, the lesbian who becomes a model to shack up with other lesbian models, the steamy backrooms in gay clubs, etc. In page after page of the Sturm und Drang involved in female friendships and love affairs, Ayres puts her spunky, searching characters through so many relationship configurations and emotional roller coasters that the happily-ever-after ending is an anticlimax. The two female characters with the greatest chance of finding genuine happiness with each other part company and marry men, and Ayres has her characters jumping through too many unnecessary hoops to find true love.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

It has been said that yesterday's transgressions become today's nonnews, and also that conflicts in academia are as vicious as they are because very little is at stake. But welcome to Pennsylvania's Willard College for Women ("Where a Woman Chooses Her Own Destination") in the late 1970s, when it boasts a student-faculty ratio of nine to one, which, according to the glossy Willard catalog, makes for "close relationships" between students and teachers. Moreover, each freshwoman is assigned a big sister. Green-as-grass Elizabeth Breedlove knows she has much to learn, but doesn't know the half of it. Will she learn from "leathery" Dr. Beatrice Brock, who is vying for tenure (perhaps at any cost), in her popular seminar revolving around the Bronte sisters? Or from Dusie, with her unusually intense relationship with Elizabeth's big sister at Fey House? Of such is the tongue-in-cheek humor of Ayres' period story of coming-of-age at college. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Kensington (May 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0758201117
• ISBN-13: 978-0758201119
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,472,428 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Divine Comedy of Lesbian Pulp Fiction? =), August 18, 2004

By 

Some Guy (Los Angeles, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Other Girls (Paperback)

First of all, for all those who bash this book, stop being so serious all the time! =) This is not meant to be serious literature, but highly entertaining fiction. To borrow a line from the book itself, in some sense this is a "children cover your eyes and ladies run for your lives bodice-ripping ban-the-book kind of lesbian lust" kind of book. I, for one, find this book -- in many parts -- very sexy and fun. I also think Ms. Ayres has done a very good job creating characters (at least the two main ones) that I have grown to reallly care about.

Which is why some parts of this book, which describe the horrendous suffering of one of the central characters are so very difficult to read (and perhaps un-re-readable). But fortunately the world does, after many horrors, turn around for our adorable lovers. This is the reason for my comparison between this and the Divine Comedy: just as in DC, the lovers go through 4 stages. First the illusions and temptations of the human world. Secnod the seemingly never-ending torment of hell. Third the painful but necesary purgatory to remake themselves. And finally the bliss of heaven.

I'm certainly not saying Dante should be worried about his status in the literary world because of this book! But this is to make two points: one is that for anyone who is greatly discouraged during the very difficult middle parts, don't give up! two is that this book -- while primarily written for entertainment and guilty-pleasure enjoyment -- is far from totally brainless.

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I have just re-read this book four years after my initial review and felt I should post another. Unfortunately Amazon does not allow it, so I can only edit my old review by adding a new section. Here it is:

Four years ago I reviewed this book, and gave a rather hurried and - it seems to me now - somewhat skewed take on the book, especially in light of my reading experiences of the past four years.

Now think of these following things you might like to find in a book (and if you weren't searching for these things, how did you find this book anyway? ^_^): an insightful lesbian bildungsroman, filled with moments of inspired high comedy and tastefully luscious sapphic sex, dramatic but not contrived, populated by sympathetic characters, whimsical yet realistic, with the added weight of tragic heartbreak. Now how many books like that can you find? Now add two more filters: true love, and an unambiguously happy ending, and how many are left?

For the past four years I've looked. And looked. And looked. As far as I can see, there's Sarah Water's "Tipping the Velvet" (which lacks the comedy but makes up with more and better character evolution) and there's Diane Ayre's "Other Girls."

This second time, my own reaction manages to surprise me: I still can't bear to read the "Broken Time" parts, and I still get absurdly happy near the end, as the delicious anticipation for that dizzying tabula rasa moment builds. I guess it says something about the way Ms. Ayres forged this central relationship between Pip and Elizabeth. Their love is not tested by any of your run-of-the-mill stresses, not even betrayal, but the worst trauma and guilt. In this regard, the depth and strength of their true love is not something that even "Tipping The Velvet" can approach.

Suffice to say, time has only made me appreciate this book much, much more.

p.s.: all you Willard girls, eh, women, English majors out there, please help me understand this sentence: "Years of carrying around that precious cargo lifted with the pitch until one went down with the ship like sunken treasure and the other was set adrift." I have racked my brain and come up with nothing. What does this mean?

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Touching Tragedy, July 31, 2005

By 

Megan (New york) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Other Girls (Mass Market Paperback)

First off- I completely disagree that this book is any sort of pulp fiction. This was one of the best books I have ever read, and I have read many. The two most influental characters in the book, Elizabeth and Pip, take a while for a relationship to grow, but that makes it more realistic than having them start off into a relationship right at the beginning.

One of the greatest things about this book was Pip. She was a strong character in the beginning, but because of a rape by an egomaniac who also rapes his beautiful stepsister, the strength that Pip was haloed with dissolves, and the reality of her ruin and damage because of this horrible act become tragic and poignant throughout the novel. Her ruin gets in the way of her relationship with Elizabeth, and Pip's need to find and escape leaves her abandoning the one she loves and dissappearing for 8 years.

A beautiful ending and laughs throughout grant this novel with something very few authors are able to give to their work, especially when dealing with comlex personalities and tragedies.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Questionable, May 4, 2004

By 

Andrea Michelle Maruca (Vancouver, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Other Girls (Mass Market Paperback)

Despite it's many flaws, numerous of which were surprisingly editorial mishaps, I couldn't put this book down. I have to wonder if the editor was so compelled that they actually read the story, and thus missed simple things like grammatical errors, character name spelling changes, and most of all a lack of fluid time of events throughout. Despite these things I couldn't stop thinking of how genuis Ayres must be. That is how INSANELY pulled in I was by this story. It was real, it was simple in that reality, and I started it thinking there was no way I would finish it, and within a chapter was hooked for the duration. Signs of true genuis, and I'm here today hoping to find more of her work. Those degrading this book were too caught up in what they idealized in a book rather than what was there. Perhaps they were lesbians who had never in their life questioned their sexuality and thus turned to a man, or who were disapointed at the twists and turns and seemingly useless character additives. Finish the books ladies - you will NOT be disapointed. For the first time in my LIFE I finished a book and said - I can't believe it - it could not have ended ANY other way!