Customer Reviews

Pretty Good for a Girl: An Athlete's Story

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In this autobiographical novel, Heywood captures the tensions she felt as a high-school female distance runner competing in the rapidly-evolving world of women's athletics.

The sport culture in which she was immersed sent her conflicting messages of what it meant to be a person, to be female, to be an athlete, to be a female athlete. Heywood comments on the fact that she wanted to feel real but that she often felt "erased." And this erasure extended beyond the emotional to the physical, exhibiting itself in anorexia, among other traumatic experiences.

That she struggled with her own personhood was, to me, a primary focus of the book. I see it more as a reflective cultural critique than an attempt to entertain or delight readers with a traditionally structured plot and prose.

As a female high-school/college runner (18 at the time this book was published), I have often felt some of the inner tensions Heywood portrays in this novel, though to a much lesser extent. This is a book worth reading from an author perhaps more well-known for her academic works.

Ms. Heywood has written a compelling story of a female athlete (runner) coming of age. She presents her memoir in a straight forward manner and does not hold back. She had a sexual relationship with her high school coach. She presents her story with all the emotional ambiguity I'm sure it carried. Ms. Heywood later struggled with an eating disorder. Again, this is presented in a very real manner. Ms. Heywood is also a very gifted writer. I found this book a compelling read and it should have a wide audience.