Customer Reviews

girls

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I thought this book was excellent. I had not expected to relate so well to the content, but to me the topic semed less about underage girls and more about the struggle against boredom and apathy that comes with success. In the end, I'm not sure if I felt like less of an ass because others feel the same way I do, or more of one given the brutal portrayal men receive in this book.

The only parts that didn't work for me were the excerpts from the Iliad. They didn't detract from my overall enjoyment, but they did not add anything to it either.

The use of second-person form is a bit unsual, but for me it actually worked quite well since the material was so easy to relate to. I felt the "you" he wrote about could quite plausibly be me, were I in the given situation. And at times I wanted it to be that way, and at times I felt that showed my own flaws and insecurities.

Oh, just a word of warning on this one -- not sure if women will like it. Don't be fooled by the title, the book is all about men. And ladies, if you do read this, I warn you in advance that YES -- men really do think like this. Kelman is not just some lone deviant.

What a sensational read! I read this in a couple of hours - couldn't put it down. It's a bit of a car crash scenario, you don't want to look but you don't want to look away.

This novel works on two levels, as a trashy thrills and spills read and as a social commentary.

A very interesting exploration of the male mind, society's obsession with youth, success and apathy. Dark, erotic and fascinating.

You read a favorable review for girls in Esquire magazine so you drop by the local Barnes and Noble and great, they have three copies. You make your purchase and head home and dive in. You can't say it is completely satisfying but you are not disappointed, either. You like the episode in St. Barths near the end. You wish you had made it through the Iliad and the Odyssey, though, that might have helped, and god knows you tried, you tried. You chuckle when you get to the Reading Group Guide at the back. WTF? A Reading Group Guide? This ain't no oprah book, you think, and you don't -- never will! -- belong to a reading group. You know that good reading is like good running, a solitary activity. You might make recommendations, yes, but you will never discuss, and especially not in a group. You know that's the code and you will keep it always. And you discover that you love this second person thing, you can't get enough of it. You love it so much in fact that you vow from now on to use it only. It's so easy, you think. You are set free, a new day has dawned, and you owe it all to girls. That and much more.

Kelman's book will spread among the female gender like a plague, praying on their every insecurity and validating their every secret fear about men. As disgusted and incredulous as you are, you will continue to devour every sentence with the same focus a deer gives to an oncoming car. You are wishing it all to be one man's interpretation of the male psyche, while knowing that Kelman is revealing to you what no boyfriend, friend, brother, husband, lover or father ever will. As appalled as you are upon completing it, you must reluctantly admit that any book that gets to you on this level must be a triumph. If a writer can cause you a lack of sleep, the errant thought about his effort in the middle of your work day, then you have to give him his due - he is among the brilliant. You complete the book, knowing you must recommend it to several of your friends (both men and women), though you already wish you'd never laid eyes on it.

In Nic Kelman's first novel, Girls, he presents us with a `type:' men who are affluent and ambitious businessmen, men who are spiritually flawed in some basic way and seem to need the attentions of much younger women to make themselves feel worthy and whole. Told through a series of vignettes by a variety of narrators, Girls comes to the conclusion, it appears, that it's not love that's improbably - it's monogamy.
Interesting and thought-provoking in ways I hadn't anticipated.

In Kelman's stream-of-conscious indulgence in the world of carnal knowledge, three financially secure and jaded men enjoy opportunistic sex, the expression of which is unavailable to other economic levels of society. In each man's life, joy has been replaced by pervasive boredom and each endures, like Macbeth, the "charmed life". The hedonistic preoccupation with orgasm is almost a burden, similar to the agony of indecision suffered by Humbert Humbert in Nabokov's Lolita.

Kelman takes a large bite of forbidden fruit in this novel, as his three characters blindly pursue sex with nubile young women trembling on the edge of womanhood, the few fleeting, moments of absolute physical perfection. The men wax poetic on the nature of obsession, their ongoing age-appropriate relationships and the influence of Greek philosophy on the evolution of social mores, particularly as related to borderline (aberrant) sexual behavior.

Kelman's novel is actually a profound social commentary on the loose moral constructs that govern the actions of these men, who are protected by their enormous fortunes and therefore insulated from the law. Given de facto permission to indulge any desire, any fantasy, with little or no fear of consequence, this elite class hovers at the next level of decadence, a pervasive and inevitable progression.

The object of each man's affections, the child-woman, may either perform wanton acts on demand with sexual innocence or burst into tears at any imagined slight, childishly clutching a stuffed teddy bear to a still-developing chest. Therein lies the issue: justification of the seduction of such girls. Kelman posits that men resent the way the playing field has been made unequal, as women demand, "We're just as strong as you, so stop punching so...hard." This is the conundrum, that "even though you may not be as strong as us, you can make us weak". Such musings preoccupy each character, while sampling their Lolitas, drawn to ever-riskier trysts.

"girls" is no cheap Katherine Harrison knockoff. Kelman's characters never yield to the febrile angst of Humbert Humbert, who desperately marries the older woman to access her young daughter. These men are self-observant, self-assessing and even dispassionate. Neither is Kelman's novel condescending toward women. His incisive perspective is focused on a very real dilemma: moral dissolution. His earnest portrait is worthy of consideration, each man maintaining a sense of propriety while incrementally self-destructing. There is no voyeuristic opportunism, just a peek inside three men's personal hearts-of-darkness. This is an esoteric journey through the looking glass of male fantasy, where around each corner, a nubile female awaits, her innocence as tempting as the Holy Grail. Luan Gaines/2003.

Kelman's book paints a bleak portrait of men who live in a world of dysfunction and egoism. The book is a startling truth of the game that many choose to play- many of his characters are oblivious to this and don't realize they have the freedom of choice in the matter. Sexual possession, esteem building through hollow physical intimacy in the context of human instincts run wild. He has put on paper what western civilization has become too many. The interwoven complexities of status, power and human insecurity creates the backdrop for girls. His characters however tragic- dwelling in the blind spots of spiritual and emotional vacuums, chasing, harrying, painfully reminiscing and killing themselves slowly in angst and neediness.

Girls is a parable, one that this era is responsible for promoting through advertising, glossy magazines and shallow dreams. Men running from the truth, unable to face the reality of their loneliness and futile lives where they identify with material and sexual conquest whilst destroying their souls in the process. The sexual fix through the encounter of ignoring boundaries and the purpose of ones conscience.

Kelman gets to the point; he uses language carefully and with consideration. He is an author to watch; his observations are strong and leave moral judgments to the reader.

A significant book..

The extraordinary aspect of this book is that something so intrinsic in the potential of man and girl has taken so long to be articulated in an honest, apolitical and non-judgmental way. GIRLS talks about more than the inexorable moral slide of today's corporate man. Kelman is not anti-capitalist, nor is he claiming material success today leaves the powerful and those they attract in a greater spiritual void than it once did: as his parallel narrative reminds us, the Greeks had their Gods and their Furies and yet they were fighting for 14 year old girls with their lives. This is about intelligent men losing the battle with their instincts, about the fragility of status and about the searing, frightening truth that moments are what men live for. Whatever it takes.

It is surprising that this could be published in a country where lynch mobs start to form if anyone much over 18 expresses any interest in someone much under 18.

Of course, the last line says that the men are ugly (morally, not physically). So that makes it ok.

Then there is the Imprimatur on the back of the hard cover edition from some NPR liberal, implying that the book is about how filthy rich capitalist pigs turn to forbidden fruit. Not true. Or only superficially.

The subtitle of the book is "A Paean" - a joyous song of praise or triumph. These are mostly stories about men having the epiphany that it is wonderful to make love to young girls, and that the girls like it too.

The story about Pusan, published alone, would be pornographic. The girl is described as looking like she has barely reached puberty. There is no mention of the reality of teen prostitution - the degradation, drug addiction, brutal pimps who take all the money, disease, etc. No, this is a paean about the joy of making love to very young girls.

A inconvenient truth: Pubescent girls and rich, powerful men are attracted to each other. From the standpoint of evolution, it couldn't be any other way. Mother Nature cares about reproduction. She doesn't care about college, careers, etc. (We should, of course.)

One hundred thousand years of evolution - A girl reaches puberty and looks for the best man to protect and provide for her and her children--a strong, powerful man who is good at killing things (food and enemies). That impulse doesn't go away because she knows intellectually that she should get an education and find someone with whom she can communicate.

If evolution programs pubescent girls to look for adult men with whom to mate, it has to follow that the men are attracted to them too. It has to work that way. It would be a cruel joke by Mother Nature to have teen girls hot for men but the men saying "But we don't have anything in common. What would we talk about?" (Any straight man who says that when you ask him if he is attracted to cute teen girls is lying--to you or to himself.)

Naturally, mature women don't like this arrangement. But Mother Nature has to send the sperm where they will do the most good for species survival.

Man the hunter. One hundred thousand years of hunting. Many of the stories in this book remind me of a hunter watching in awe as a bird flies over, then killing it and taking it home to devour. Our hunting nature doesn't go away because we spend the day in front of the computer.

One guy has a buddy who has just gone through a breakup with his girlfriend. The guy takes his buddy to a strip club to help him get over it. He does so in a nurturing, even tender way. Yes, that sounds like an oxymoron. There is a new young dancer. The guy realizes that he can be the one to take away part of her innocence--"pluck her out of the sky"--by paying her to dance erotically with another girl, which he does.

Animal Planet. There is one story that has nothing to do with young girls. It is a story about alpha male territoriality, with instinctual roots going back millions of years. Guy wants to buy a ranch--his territory. He goes into a restaurant in the nearby town. A local alpha male says "You're in my booth." ("My territory") He says it politely--no bellowing, no pawing the ground. The guy looking to buy a ranch is not alpha. He's in sales. He gets up and moves, realizing that he will never be comfortable around other men. No different from what you might see on a nature program, except for the species.

Nothing in this book would bother you if it was about wolves.

Besides being a paean about making love to young girls, the book is about burned out hunters finding joy from being with someone who is not corrupted, someone free as a bird. Sadly, these middle aged guys should be finding guilt-free joy and meaning in life from being with their grandchildren. Unfortunately, their grandchildren are probably robotic yuppy kids, rushing joylessly from soccer to ballet. As Kelman points out, they are being taught about survival of the fittest.

One reviewer called this a "parable of modern times." I wonder what they made of the many quotations from the Iliad and Odyssey, two of our oldest works of literature. Girls is about the very nature of men and girls, not about paternalistic, capitalistic modern society. That would be too convenient. We need to be honest about the fact that teens and adults are attracted to each other. Forewarned, we have a better chance of avoiding the kind of ugly situations Kelman portrays.

I read Girls around the time the seemingly nude photo of Miley Cyrus appeared in Vanity Fair. It was interesting to hear people insisting that the photo is not erotic because 1)The photographer, Annie Liebovitz, is a well-respected artist, and 2)We know, intellectually, that Miley had her pants on during the shoot. Give me a break. As a work of art, the photo portrays a nude, pubescent girl, in bed, having just been wildly ravished. It does no good to close our eyes and pretend otherwise.

Raw and powerful, this beautifully written book will open your eyes or your mind to the quite disturbing minds of some successful men we all know. You won't put it down, and you won't stop thinking about it. It's that simple, but the point of the book isn't.