Undiscovered Gyrl (Vintage Contemporaries Orig) [Paperback]

Allison Burnett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 11, 2009

Only on the internet can you have so many friends and be so lonely.

Beautiful, wild, funny, and lost, Katie Kampenfelt is taking a year off before college to find her passion. Ambitious in her own way, Katie intends to do more than just smoke weed with her boyfriend, Rory, and work at the bookstore. She plans to seduce Dan, a thirty-two-year-old film professor.

Katie chronicles her adventures in an anonymous blog, telling strangers her innermost desires, shames, and thrills. But when Dan stops taking her calls, when her alcoholic father suffers a terrible fall, and when she finds herself drawn into a dangerous new relationship, Katie's fearless narrative begins to crack, and dark pieces of her past emerge.

Sexually frank, often heartbreaking, and bursting with devilish humor, Undiscovered Gyrl is an extraordinarily accomplished novel of identity, voyeurism, and deceit.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Exclusive: Christopher Rice Reviews Undiscovered Gyrl

Christopher Rice is the author of the New York Times bestsellers A Density of Souls, The Snow Garden, Light Before Day, and Blind Fall. The son of author Anne Rice and the late poet Stan Rice, he lives in Los Angeles. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of Undiscovered Gyrl:

Undiscovered Gyrl is the blog of beautiful, blond, Katie Kampenfelt, an 18-year-old girl who seeks to record, for her own edification, the year following her high school graduation.

The novel begins as the diary of an ebullient, funny teenager, filled with the musings, mood swings, and escapades of youth. We are in her skin as she plots her break-up with her college-age boyfriend, battles with her mother, considers whether to sleep with a 32-year-old film professor, confronts a terrible truth about her new boss, and lands a new job as nanny to a newborn.

Soon, however, the story deepens into the engrossing record of a young soul in peril.

Gossip Girl this ain’t.

Allison Burnett's novel reads as both a searing glimpse into a tortured teenage psyche, and a skillful meditation on the cruel excesses of the Internet Age. Katie Kampenfelt's voice feels utterly authentic, disturbingly so, making for a protagonist who is as riveting as she is infuriating.

The story is revealed through a series of terse blog entries, but they are studded with haunting imagery and unforgettable turns of phrase. Ultimately, this is the dark tale of one girl's unquenchable thirst for love and acceptance, but Allison Burnett tells it with a fearlessness that elevates those time-worn concepts above the realm of Hollywood cliché.

Prepare yourself for a page-turning, single-sitting read that will leave you disarmed and disturbed and questioning your own engagement with the Internet's capacity for anonymity and fantasy.--Christopher Rice

(Photo © Gwen and Eddie Photography)

From Publishers Weekly

Written as a blog, this debut novel stars Katie Kampenfelt, who types away at her very own Internet reality show. A sassy suburbanite teenager who defers college for a year, Katie takes a job as a nanny for a wealthy family and chronicles her day-to-day life online in the time of Netflix, Barack Obama and Internet lingo. The divulging blog entries start in October 2007 and end in May 2008, instantly gaining popularity as Katie confesses her promiscuous behavior and charts her uncensored thoughts and emotions. Her audience provides constant feedback, both supportive and critical. She notes that only on the Internet can one be both lonely and popular simultaneously, which is a comment on our culture and being 17. When Katie's admittedly superficial arrogance is under control, she is insightful and hilarious, exposing her fears and insecurities. Name and event changes in order to keep the blog's anonymity are disappointing, a fiction within fiction, and raises the question, what is truth? On the Internet, who is really anonymous? Perhaps our dear Katie wasn't such an undiscovered gyrl after all. Burnett's novel is intriguing, but seems at times contrived. (Aug.)
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Product Details

• Paperback: 293 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Original edition (August 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307473120
• ISBN-13: 978-0307473127
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (89 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,265,341 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Allison Burnett is a novelist and screenwriter living in Los Angeles. He was born in Ithaca, New York. and grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and Evanston, Illinois, where he attended Northwestern University, majoring in the Oral Interpretation of Literature. His debut novel, Christopher, was a finalist for the 2004 PEN Center USA Literary Award in Fiction. His second novel, The House Beautiful, was published in the fall of 2006. His third novel Undiscovered Gyrl was published by Vintage Books in 2009. In 2011, the third book in his B.K. Troop trilogy, Death By Sunshine, was published by Writers Tribe Books.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Book to Incite Readers, October 22, 2009

By 

T. Adlam "professional consumer" (South Florida, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Undiscovered Gyrl (Vintage Contemporaries Orig) (Paperback)

(What's this?)

I firmly believe that books should stir emotions, whether they be good or bad. A book, or story, that incites a reader is a book that will oft be remembered and discussed. Of course, when the book is highly subjective or provocative, it runs the chance of being wildly loved or hated. This is one of those books.

It begins with a seventeen year old girl named Katie Kampenfelt who decides to defer her collegiate career for a year and blogs about her experience. Of course, Katie Kampenfelt is not her real name and she has a penchant for speaking her mind, unfiltered. She describes explicitly her alcohol and drug abuse, her dysfunctional relationship with her boyfriend, and her affairs with older men (one of whom was married and the other almost so).

Within the first fifty pages, it became clear to me that Katie was an amalgamation of so many different types of people. And her candor was apt to offend most, if not everyone, who read the entries. There were racial, political, and socioeconomic pejoratives strewn throughout. There was even an allusion (I believe, but could be mistaken) to a character from 'The L Word'. All of this makes Katie easy to dislike.

Despite that and the eye-popping moments, the book was easy to read. The voice was casual and light and there were moments of true lucidity. For instance, when she's discussing narcissism with "Dan" or when she's learning something from "Paul" or "Glenn", it's apparent that Katie, on a deeper level, wants more from her life, but doesn't know where to look for it.

What pulled me out of the story at times was the contrivance of some of her spelling errors and writing quirks. We all have them, yes, but in the story it seemed as though they were carefully placed there to dumb herself down, but instead came across as being disingenuous.

Then there's the matter of the ending. If a reader actually makes it to the end of the book, it means she's invested a great deal of time getting to know the character and caring about the character (even if that caring is dislike...), so the unresolved nature of the end can be disconcerting. We *want* to know what happened, but ultimately we have to determine it for ourselves.

In truth, I saw it coming because this book is a discussion piece. From page three, I realized this fact. And having everything tied up with a neat little bow wouldn't haunt the reader--it wouldn't cause as many discussions as leaving it up in the air for the reader to figure out (and possibly debate with friends).

If you do decide to read this book, you should know one thing going in: There is a good chance you will either be completely revolted or intrigued by it. I liken it to a train plowing into a stalled car on the railroad tracks; when it's over you either feel a little guilty for having watched or glad that you looked away.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Self Discovery through Undiscovered Gyrl, January 25, 2011

By 

Allison Minnick (Littleton, Colorado) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Undiscovered Gyrl (Vintage Contemporaries Orig) (Paperback)

"Undiscovered Gyrl" moved me in so many ways. I was completely engrossed and mesmerized by the dichotomy of Katie Kampenfelt. She is courageous and confident, yet vulnerable and reckless. I am a 51 year old housewife and have a 12 year old daughter. The book brought back memories of when I was that age: the mind and drive of a young woman, the power of seduction and its ugly components and our need for validation. Burnett's book exposes multiple layers that affect not only "Katie" but the reader as well. We are all victims of delusion in one form or another. I am still reeling from the aftermath of Katie's sexcapades and the consequences that befall both her and the reader. This book will stay with me for a very long time. I highly recommend it!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story that really sticks with you, March 24, 2010

By 

E. Piccolotti (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Undiscovered Gyrl (Kindle Edition)

I have not read book in a very long time that has stuck with me the way Undiscovered Gyrl has. I was a bit hesitant to purchase this at first because I didn't know if I would get annoyed with the "blog style" of writing, but after reading just a few pages I was hooked. The author does a great job of getting the reader to connect with Katie and have many different emotions about her. Sometimes I hated her, sometimes I thought she was funny and sometimes I just felt bad for her. I was very surprised to find out that Allison Burnett is a man, but he did a great job of capturing an older teenager girl's voice on paper. Katie is just as immature, impulsive and cocky as I remember being at that age. The ending of the book is a very unique twist that I did not see coming at all. A definite must read, and you will keep thinking about it long after you finish reading!