Citizen Girl (Hardcover)

~ (Author), (Author) "The ladies' room door squeaks open and I stop breathing, jerking my feet up on the toilet seat lid in an effort to work through..." (more)
Key Phrases: cell rings, New York, Chicks Gone Senseless, Vice President (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Citizen Girl is the sophomore effort from Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, whose Nanny Diaries sent Park Avenue mothers running for cover and catapulted the duo to cult-like status amongst gossip literature's elite. This time around, our heroine is Girl, a twentysomething women's studies major whose liberal arts education led her to believe that saving women from worldwide oppression was as easy as reporting for duty at her local feminist non-profit. As Girl soon learns, no job is ever as it seems, and even the director of the Center for Equity in Community is not free from manipulating her staff in order to get ahead. As we follow Girl through unemployment and an eventual position as the Director of Rebranding Knowledge Acquisition for My Company, McLaughlin and Kraus invite readers on a raucous journey though the ups and downs of early 21st Century corporate life.

While at times disjointed and overly crass, Citizen Girl certainly has its moments. Most post-grad women will be able to identify with Girl on at least some level, whether it be returning to Career Services with her tail between her legs or forgiving her boyfriend for hiring a stripper at his best friend's bachelor party. ("I turn to find Buster slumped on my front stoop, soaked to the skin behind a proffered bouquet of hopeful white tulips.")

Some readers may tire of Girl's particular combination of naiveté and idealism after the first 50 pages, and the blatant stereotypes may wear thin after a while (Girl's boss at My Company is named Guy, and the woman they hire to turn things around is called Manley). Still, Girl's story is intriguing enough that by the end of the book, most of us will be rooting for her as she negotiates her way through the tumultuous battlefield that often is corporate America. --Gisele Toueg

From Publishers Weekly

McLaughlin and Kraus (The Nanny Diaries) are back with another tale of woe featuring a 20-something New Yorker searching for a way out of her miserable life. This hyperventilating satire features Girl, an ambitious feminist whose well-known girl-empowering boss saddles Girl with the worst tasks, steals her ideas and finally cans her for speaking out. After a desperate search, Girl is hired for a dream job with a matching dream salary. As the Director of Rebranding Knowledge Acquisition for My Company, she doesn't exactly know what she's supposed to do, but it involves dodgy activities with her boss and being made over to fit in with a new California client. "You're lucky to even be here.... We're about to buy you a few thousand dollars' worth of suits. So just go try on the Goddamn bikini.... Honey, what're ya gonna do about the bush?" As work goes from bad to worse, the only light in Girl's tunnel is Buster—a sweet boy/man who creates video games for a living and who fluctuates between fleeing Girl and being there for her. But when a new boss takes My Company into a whole new darker direction (think sex industry), Girl is forced to make a decision between morals and money. Though witty and biting in spots, this bitter tale is too schematic and strident to be much fun.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Atria; First Edition. 1 in number line edition (November 16, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743266854
• ISBN-13: 978-0743266857
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (218 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #548,236 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not THAT bad, and definitely not worse than Nanny Diaries., July 8, 2005

By	Kharabella "Kharabella" (Somewhere in the midwest . . .) - See all my reviews

I actually give it three and a half stars. At first, I had a hard time getting into it, as I had a hard time getting into The Nanny Diaires. The world of these heroines -- responsible WASP girls from private prep schools trying to do dubious good in New England -- isn't a world that I know, or that I have a lot of patience for. But I understand what they are trying to say. So I have to say that most of these reviews are WAY too harsh.

The problem with Citizen Girl isn't that its bad. The writing is just as short, psuedo-clever, and sparse on the details and descriptions as Nanny Diaries. But I think it's the subject matter probably makes even readers of (so-called) chick lit uncomfortable. It's about feminism, and how hard it is for an intelligent, well-meaning young woman to try to make a living out of making the world a better place for women. It's about how varied and twisted the meaning of "feminism" has become. It's about what happens when you just stand by and allow things that you don't agree with to happen just so that you can make money. Girl, the heroine in this book, puts up with a lot of crap with the hope of hopefully doing something positive in the end. The more insults and mistreatment that she puts up with, the more money that she makes. She's motivated both by her need to get a steady paycheck and by her wish to do something positive at the end of the day. She works for a horrible company and is relentlessly used, exploited, and insulted. The work that she does goes against everything (feminist) that she believes in, but she stays with it largely because she hopes that if she does the work the company will make good on its promise to make a HUGE charitable donation to a non-profit women's organization. Plus, the economy is bad and she needs a steady paycheck.

Most of the women that I know who read these types of books don't consider themselves feminists -- the word is scary and uncomfortable and somehow implies to them that feminism isn't feminine and that it means that they can't wear lip gloss or cook for their boyfriend. Honestly, this book doesn't do much to allay that silly misconception, but it puts all the types and stereotypes out there. For most of the characters in this book, feminism is more of a jargon and a marketing strategy than a cause. And Girl is expected to let everything slide and ignore the way that the world she's living in, working in, spending money in, is negatively impacting women. Honestly, it's a good point and a worthy discussion. But it isn't as glamourous a subject as rich ladies and their spoiled children.

I don't see what the other reviewers were so suprised about in the language. I found nothing offensive about the language at all, but I am an urban girl. I think the book could have been better written, but it didn't suck. And I say that as an actual feminist with a strong addiction to lip gloss.

47 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing--worlds removed from The Nanny Diaries, November 19, 2004

By	Bethany Gronberg "bethany actually" (Southern California, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I loved The Nanny Diaries, both for the style and the subject, and was eagerly looking forward to the authors' second book. I bought Citizen Girl without even reading a page, expecting to love it just as much. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. While Ms. McLaughlin and Ms. Krauss's unique style is intact, the writing and editing are somewhat less stellar than TND, and with a lot of unnecessary profanity added to the mix. (It's not that I am a prude--I've been known to cuss a blue streak when the situation warrants it--but the authors seem to be under the mistaken impression that lots of [...] and even a few [...] will give their writing "edge". It doesn't. It just makes the book sound like it was written by a teenager trying to shock someone.) The main character is unsymapathetic and rather annoying, as is her love interest. The plot is convoluted and weirdly dark. Maybe this actually is a good representation of a young woman trying to make her way in New York today, but I had trouble relating at all. I plan to return my copy of the book after plowing through about half of it, and then finally skipping to the end.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars "Real," at times, but mostly just "real bad.", February 22, 2006

By	J. Tolosky (New York) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After struggling through the first chapter's hellish boss and swallowing my urge to scream at Girl to grow a backbone, I had hope for this book. I related, all too well, to Girl's trauma when her mother tells her to reread the opening of the Grapes of Wrath for perspective.

"It IS the Grapes of Wrath - nobody's hiring! I'm competing for unpaid internships with fifty-year-old-PhD's who've introduced their own bills in Congress. Nobody is sitting out there tonight praying that some 24 year old with a whopping two and a half years' experience will fall down their chimney."

The book profiles Girl's efforts to struggle through job-searching, unemployment, incompetent and overly-arrogant employers, love interests, and the desperate desire for a female role model that is not her mother. Throughout, Girl is belittled and kept in the dark about most everything, and she never makes an effort to actually pursue that information she needs to be successful. She is witty and sharp-tongued in her mind, but too meek to sensibly take a stand for anything she allegedly believes in in real life.

There is no victory for Girl in any of her struggles, nor is there any internal paradigm shift. This book had a lot of potential to be great, but never actually managed to launch itself above mediocre clumpings of rhetoric and attempted satire. The last page turns and you're left wondering what the heck happened - and if anything really did. The only character, at the end of the story, that I found admirable was Buster - and mostly I felt bad for him for having to put up with Girl's crap all the time.

In the end, this book has too much in common with a New Year's resolution. There's plenty of opportunity for change, and a lot of promise, but it never happens.