Trouble with Girls [Paperback]

Marshall Boswell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 2004

Trouble with Girls features Parker Hayes--a likeable guy looking for love and sex--at various points in his life in ten interconnected stories, from junior high and high school to post-grad and thirtysomething living in the real world. He's struggling to figure out how to be a man, and how to get--and hold on to--a woman.

It seems that girls aren't paying any attention to Parker, or he's prematurely breaking up with women he's still in love with, or he's stringing along exes just to fill the time, then driving himself crazy trying to win them back. His best intentions never seem to turn out quite right. Though he hardly wants to admit it, it's obvious that Parker has trouble with girls. ?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Though Boswell imbues this debut collection with infectious energy, the 10 stories are at times disconcertingly slight. The tales follow perpetually angst-ridden Memphis-born Parker Hayes from his youth in the 1970s and 1980s-catching a rare baseball in right field, weathering abuse from his muscle-bound older brother, trying to be a "punk rock jock" to impress his schoolmates-into his adulthood, where graduate school and a series of unfulfilling jobs waiting tables, managing supply companies and selling telephone services leave him feeling lost. As the title suggests, Parker's life is full of romantic complications. In "Venus/Mars," a soon-to-be-married woman takes Parker out drinking, with the notion that her own attractive presence will help him score. "Grub Worm" has Parker trying to get over his disappointment in love by sleeping with his love object's sorority sister-to his humiliation. Parker rises to the challenge of a long-term relationship in the volume's last story, "Spanish Omens"-only to compromise this progress through romantic misjudgments that threaten to spoil his honeymoon in Spain. If Parker has trouble with girls, however, Boswell himself has trouble writing about them. His female characters are often stereotypes: the unapproachable beauty, the angry but sexy punk. Parker's juvenile attitude toward women is plausible, but the book's one-sidedness is frustrating. Still, the dialogue is brisk and clever, and Parker himself is reasonably complex, a young man on the make who slowly gains some measure of insight and maturity.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Boswell's novel is a humorous ascent into manhood through the eyes of Parker Hayes, a 14-year-old Memphis teenager paralyzed by his raging hormones and the fear of being branded a geek. The 1970s are in full swing, and rock 'n' roll music etched into black vinyl albums provides the long-playing euphoria that keeps Parker sane in a world that keeps throwing wrenches into his best-made plans. Whether he's strategizing ways to stay clear of his older brother, who is a master of torture, or trying to be seen by the woman of his dreams, Parker's best intentions always seem to be a magnet for the dysfunctional actions of others. This pattern follows him into adult relationships, and when it comes to commitment, Parker frequently feels like a knobby-kneed kid in right field, terrified of the ball coming his way. A coming-of-age novel from a male perspective that is both funny and endearing to anyone who remembers life and the music behind the 1970s and 1980s. Elsa Gaztambide
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Delta (April 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385337833
• ISBN-13: 978-0385337830
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #740,902 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marshall Boswell is the author of the story collection, "Trouble with Girls" (Algonquin Books, 2003) and the novel "Alternative Atlanta" (Delacorte Press, 2005). Both books are currently available in paperback. His new novel is called "The Opinion Leader" and should be forthcoming soon.

In addition, Marshall has published two book-length scholarly monographs, " John Updike's Rabbit Tetralogy: Mastered Irony in Motion" (University of Missouri Press, 2001) and "Understanding David Foster Wallace" (University of South Carolina Press, 2004). He is also the co-editor of Volume IV of "The Encylcopedia of American Literature: 1946 to the Present" (Facts on File, 2008).

Marshall grew up in the Mid-South and received his B.A. from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, VA. He holds an M.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. from Emory University in Atlanta. Since 1996 he as taught American Literature and Fiction Writing at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, where he is an Associate Professor. He is married and the father of three sons. His old band, Enormous Richard, once opened up for Alex Chilton and Uncle Tupelo. In fact, his band is "thanked" in the liner notes of Uncle Tupelo's first album, though he's pretty sure Jeff Tweedy couldn't pick him out in a police line-up. Incidentally, Marshall's never actually been in a police line-up.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stories that read like a novel, March 27, 2003

By 

Phil Kailer "Phil Kailer" (Elizabethton, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trouble with Girls (Shannon Ravenel Books) (Hardcover)

Trouble With Girls is a super collection of stories that flow together to form what reads like a novel. The stories tell (the majority of) the life of Parker Hayes, starting at age thirteen at a little league baseball game through to his mid-thirties, all the while telling of his (lack of) readiness to handle the tasks of life, and more specifically, the task of landing the perfect woman.

Set in the 1970's and 1980's we see Parker grow from a child to a man, stumbling from one learning lesson to another (all in a hilarious manner), with each story thrown against the backdrop of the rock music of the days (msuic being his escape, we get a good dose of that backdrop).

The stories are written in a such a way that you will recall your own fumblings of youth and find yourself laughing with him along the way. The female characters here (and there are many) tend be a tad stereotypical (and a tad repetitive) but the reader will quickly see Parker is drawn to the same types, doomed to repeat his mistakes. It all builds to a comfortable closure and leaves you feeling content, and ready to start over and read it again.

An excellent read. Well worth the cover price.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Collection, April 26, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Trouble with Girls (Shannon Ravenel Books) (Hardcover)

This collection is for all you lovers of Paul Weller, all you readers of Trouser Press. It will make you wonder where all the friends of your youth have gone, those who grew up 'in various and sundry ways' without you. Lovely.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars troubled by girls, April 23, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Trouble with Girls (Shannon Ravenel Books) (Hardcover)

Marshall Boswell's TROUBLE WITH GIRLS is a well written, emotionally compelling, and just plain smart collection of stories. By poignantly revealing the ennervated soul of the post-modern American male, he creates a protagonist that we want to grab by the collar and shake ("You're blowing it!) and yet sympathetically cheer on to find fulfillment. Propelled by prose both Proustian in its circumlocuitous convolutions and yet obviously contemporary in diction and manner, these stories unfold in sequences reminescent of the slo-mo scenes of your favorite relationship car crash. Boswell knows his material--boys and girls, the seventies, eighties, and nineties as the threshing floor of American malehood, dating, grad school, "the real world"--and in these ten pieces, he uses that knowledge to engage the reader fully in the plight of his narrator's movement from naivety to experienced naivety. A great book.