HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Loading...

Anthropology of an American Girl (2003)

by Hilary Thayer Hamann

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
5924039,622 (3.31)15
The riveting and cinematic story of a young artist's awakening and her enduring love for a professional boxer. Set in East Hampton, New York, in the 1970s through the moneyed, high-pressured Manhattan of the 1980s.
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 15 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 40 (next | show all)
I got into this without realising what a sprawling epic journey it would be - but that's reading on a Kindle for you. It took me a while to read because there are parts of the book that are slightly less compelling than others.

The book centres around learning to be a woman in America in the late 70s/Early 80s - I think reading it as a younger girl would've allowed me to love it more - as it was a lot of the description of the love of Evie's life (Rourke) verges on Edward in Twilight territory - I know that this is often how you feel as a teen so it was difficult for me to figure out whether the book itself is annoying or it's just Evie's character.

My other complaint is that (I assume) because Evie is such an "artist" the story is often not congruent and she darts from place to place without filling in the appropriate backstory. Usually this type of thing doesn't bother me, but with something this sprawling it became a little irritating.

All of this aside it was a great book to sink into and get swept up in, there's enough tragedy and hopelessness and "will love conquer all" stuff to keep anyone happy, but alongside this the book is well written (as a whole) and smart - something you don't tend to come across all that much in the genre that is romance.

( )
  kimlovesstuff | Dec 31, 2023 |
Near the end of this book Eveline, the heroine of this book declares : "I didn't intend to think of Rourke today. I don't want to live any more of my life in absentia." Well that was the problem with this book. Eveline spent so much time lamenting her loss of Rourke and not doing anything to get him back. I was thinking; enough already , stop thinking, do something. It took 600 pages for Eveline to finally take action. ( )
  kevinkevbo | Jul 14, 2023 |
Many reviewers have commented on the "beauty of the language" in this dense, 600 page novel. The problem is that Thayer Hamann does not know when to hold back. My patience officially snapped on p.271.

"Say it, he said, the words caught at the base of his throat. No one.

No one, I said, I swore, but you.

I said it because it was true. There was no one but him, and there never would be. I loved him with pain and with something greater than pain, with a barren ache that pealed not in the heart but in the desert dry alongside it. I knew it was so even then: if in his arms I was a woman, beyond them I was nothing."

You may say that this is really not that bad, and quite possibly, I could find worse examples if I cared enough to find them. The real problem, however, is that there is 600 pages of this. The prose, and Eveline's internal monologue, wind up choking the book. In 600 pages, largely consisting of Eveline's internal monologue and musings, I should have a sense of her as a character. I don't. She remains vacuous and passive, reacting to the men around her while spouting platitudes about the female condition. I have no idea why men are irresistibly attracted to her. I have no idea why she and Rourke have The One True Love. In fact, I know very little about Rourke at all. Or Eveline's parents. Characters like Kate simply drop out of the story.

The plotting? Well, there's a plot, though it's not exactly 600 pages worth of plot. It's not helped by Thayer Hamann's technique of explaining events 200 pages later, making me say, "Oh. So I didn't miss the explanation for what happened back there. Now it makes sense."

The only thing worse than reading this novel would be to have read the unedited vanity press edition. ( )
  arosoff | Jul 11, 2021 |
“I was an American girl; I possessed what our culture valued most — independence and blind courage.”

I had heard good reviews about this book, and there was no waiting list for the eBook version of it, so I downloaded away and started in. And then paused, confused. This didn’t seem at all to be a work of great literature, but rather a long-winded and rambling narrative of a rather self-absorbed teen. Well, I thought to myself, this is about an American girl, and not the Pleasant Company brand either. And plodded onward. Somewhere around page two hundred eighty, I started wondering who exactly would enjoy this particular brand of teenage egotism and angst, but forced myself to finish in the hopes that it would have some sort of reward at the end. Still, by the time I got to the last page, six hundred sixteen, I was more than happy to part ways with Eveline. This novel starts out with a fairly ordinary girl growing up in the ’80s, chronicling her on-and-off best friendship with Kate, the traumas of school, her relationship with her boyfriend Jack. But after the first few hundred pages, I lost interest and drifted through the rest. I’m not quite sure who would be more likely to enjoy this novel, but I know that I only finished it because I hate to leave books unfinished. ( )
  resoundingjoy | Jan 1, 2021 |
It seems as though this is one of the books that is either loved or hated. I loved it. ( )
  carliwi | Sep 23, 2019 |
Showing 1-5 of 40 (next | show all)
no reviews | add a review
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
—T. S. Eliot
Dedication
For Vee, Emmanuelle and Rainier,
And for Maman
First words
Kate turned to check the darkening clouds and the white arc of her throat looked long like the neck of a preening swan. We pedaled past the mansions on Lily Pond Lane and the sky set down, resting its gravid belly against the earth.
"Hurry," I heard her call through the clack of spokes. "Rain’s coming."
Quotations
Boys will be boys, that’s what people say. No one ever mentions how girls have to be something other than themselves altogether. We are to stifle the same feelings that boys are encouraged to display. We are to use gossip as a means of policing ourselves — this way those who do succumb to sex but are not damaged by it are damaged instead by peer malice. Girls demand a covenant because if one gives in, others will be expected to do the same. We are to remain united in cruelty, ignorance, and aversion. Or we are to starve the flesh from our bones, penalizing the body for its nature, castigating ourselves for advances we are powerless to prevent. We are to make false promises then resist the attentions solicited. Basically we are to become expert liars. (p. 65)
Rourke drove through the last remaining darkness. The preliminary azure cool of morning was coming up full around us, clear as the whistles birds make. The ground ascended like a platform into day, and across it we shot, passing from one highway to the next— rolling west, rolling south, with the sun rising and the ellipse of the planet beneath. I felt defiant and alive, like a criminal in the midst of a crime— visionary and dissolute and removed from the world about me. I felt I had entered the tempo of my era. When you study explorers such as Magellan or Cortés, you follow lines across oceans and continents. The miles and the perils, the forfeiture of lives and hearts, the years lost and monies disbursed, are all reduced to trails of dots and arrows. Rourke and I were that way — no more than the eye could see, paving paths through the universe, the look of us amounting to the entirety of our story.
He said to sleep if I wanted to; I didn’t want to. (p. 275)
The days were simple, numb, and narrow. My impressions collected in layers like generations of rock beneath earth, impacted to form a single idea— that I was happy. I didn’t write; I didn’t draw; I kept no record of conversations or clothes, places passed or inhabited. Each moment that expired was a butterfly escaping, imperial in hue and contour, membranous and sheer, fluttering magically, slipping off to the gaping enormity of liberty and oblivion. Like whispers through grasslands or heath entwined with dew, in my mind and in my memory, what remains of that summer is an overriding sense of completeness." (p. 301)
This is where I falter, where I lose myself. This is where ideas of what is good and right upend, and time is dispersed, thrown down like leaves to be read. It’s difficult to say what happened. I know that my heartache was indescribable, the depth of my loneliness astonishing. I know that I worked very hard, and I never intended to hurt anyone. (p. 333)
And loneliness. I should say something of loneliness. The panic, the sweeping hysteria that comes not when you are without others, but when you are without yourself, adrift. I should describe the filthy province of mind, the blighted district inside, the place so crowded you cannot raise the lids of your eyes, and your chest is bruised by the constant assault of your heart. I want to convey the burden of despair, the ruin of compromise. Be brave, I should say to the girl in the glass, the way brave used to be — desperate to live and to love. I want her to prepare for the curse of perseverance. She may not know about resiliency. That she will last. (p. 509)
Last words
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (2)

The riveting and cinematic story of a young artist's awakening and her enduring love for a professional boxer. Set in East Hampton, New York, in the 1970s through the moneyed, high-pressured Manhattan of the 1980s.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
From the author: "I did not simply want to write about love and freedom and betrayal of the self, I wanted to write about these things sincerely, as though they were happening to the reader for the first time. I needed to find and maintain a purity of voice that was distanced not only from other characters, but from the experiences of the reader and from me as well, so that there was an originality to the perceptions of Eveline, my main character."
Haiku summary

LibraryThing Early Reviewers Alum

Hilary Thayer Hamann's book Anthropology of an American Girl was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

LibraryThing Author

Hilary Thayer Hamann is a LibraryThing Author, an author who lists their personal library on LibraryThing.

profile page | author page

Author Chat

Hilary Thayer Hamann chatted with LibraryThing members from Jul 22, 2010 to Aug 5, 2010. Read the chat.

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.31)
0.5 1
1 8
1.5 3
2 16
2.5 5
3 17
3.5 5
4 26
4.5 1
5 22

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 202,657,826 books! | Top bar: Always visible