The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship

I really wanted to love this book. It's about a group of women who grew up together in a small Midwestern city in the 1960s and 1970s, and the ways in which their friendships have endured and changed through the years. In other words, it's about me — well, not me but my generation, the women who surrounded me throughout my own coming-of-age in a small Midwestern city.

Here's the thing, though: What I said about it not being about me? That's all too true. The girls from Ames are a group of 11 girls/women who were pretty popular, pretty wild, and pretty clannish about letting outsiders into the golden circle. They even turn on their own occasionally, as when a subset of the girls gets together one night in high school to carefully show more enumerate to one of the others all the ways in which she is simply not smart enough, pretty enough, or cool enough to be part of their group without making some drastic changes. It read like a scene out of a horror novel to me, which made it all the more dumbfounding to learn that the girl who was the center of all that vitriol still hangs out with all of them! Nothing about staying friends with people who treated you so cruelly makes sense to me.

I enjoyed the nostalgia of the pop-culture touchstones sprinkled throughout the The Girls from Ames. But to be honest, I kind of hated the girls from Ames themselves. And after reading about what they were like in high school and beyond, I'm pretty sure they would have hated me, too. show less

I really enjoyed this book. With that said, I didn't really understand the point of it. Is Zaslow trying to tell a story about 11 girls and the 10 women they became, or is he trying to demonstrate the important role of friendship in women's lives? I wasn't sure if this was just a collection of anecdotes about these women's lives, together and apart, or if it was a sociological study of sorts about what holds women's relationships together and why they matter so much. The style of the book also contributed to my uncertainty - it's kind of written like a memoir or a group of stories, but in a more factual, straight to the point way. At times, I felt like I was reading a textbook. However, I'm glad I read this book. It made me laugh, cry show more (hard, several times), and most importantly, think about my own relationships with the women in my life. I guess I'm just not sure what makes this book different from any other book about friends. show less

So how could I like this book when I grew up outside of a clique in junior high? I could easily understand the pain of rejection and the meanness of the rejecters as in the chapter titled” Intervention”. To me this book is a window into what was happening inside a closed circle of girls.
This group of girls met in kindergarten and before the same as the group I knew in junior high. They developed ties that were like invisible glue that sealed them together and cut others off.
Even though I was angry at the first fourth of the book, especially when they had a meeting to tell one of the girls that she did not fit in, I stuck with it and did learn from the book.
When grief struck the group they bore it together. They learned from each show more other on how to deal with life’s worst events. When cancer struck the daughter of one of them, it was as though she was everyone’s daughter, when breast cancer struck one of them and later another, they developed rituals to bring the relief of laughter to give them respite from the horrible situation. They learned to deal with overpowering emotions with courage and ingenuity.
The author emphasizes the differences between men and women when it comes to friendships. Women share feelings, family problems, inadequacies but men stick to topics outside of their personal selves, to sports, car and tangible objects. This may be a handicap that men have to deal with. The sharing and caring that exists in women’s groups does not seem thrive in men’s groups. That to me was not new or surprising.
What was more interesting to me was that the group of 11 women grew emotionally and became more nurturing to each other and to other people. They learned to be a positive force in life and to be more accepting of others. They learned to be more forgiving, accepting of differences and even how to love their own children more. To me, that is reason to read this book.
I recommend this book to all those who been those who have been in cliques and those who were always left out. Don’t get discouraged by the references to studies about the differences between men and women. Keep on reading until you find the gold of friendships and their endurance. show less

I had high expectations for this book but was disappointed at the plodding narrative, which hopped around without any clear direction or purpose. The story purports to be about the enduring ties of female friendship and tells the tale of 11 women whose relationships have endured for more than 40 years. However, the women appear to be shallow and uninspiring, and the parts of the book that review their lives during high school portray them as cliquish and exclusive. There are even sections of the story that talk about other girls in the school as "nerdier" or "desperate for friends," which is what you expect from teenagers but not from adults who are going back to tell their stories from a more mature vantage point. Very disappointing.

This was such a joy to read. These 11 women are such a rarity in our world. Their story made me laugh out loud on one page and the next I was reading through tears. It made me reflect on my relationships with girlfriends from my past and present. It made me think about my life as a wife and a mom. I have so many pages turned over so I could go back to them as I am struggling with my parents, with my husband, with my children. There were pages and pages of wisdom and things I want to remember.

I loved how Marilyn's dad told her when she left for college, "Here's what we'll do. We are going to keep you at the end of our fishing line. And if you ever need anything, you just give a little tug and we'll reel you back in."

I also loved the show more part about Sally's intervention and how her mom handled the situation. Sally said, "This was a great lesson in parenting for me. It is not our job, as parents, to go to coaches, teachers, other parents and try to make everything run smoothly for our kids. But I've come to see that our job is to help our kids become people who are capable and believe in themselves enough to deal with the world."

The fact that there was such joy in this book right next to the sadness that also happened made this so heartwarming and helped me appreciate each and every girlfriend I have ever had. show less

I was able to borrow this from a long distance friend (thank you Terri!) who won it from Goodreads First Reads giveaway program. It’s an advance readers’ copy, paperback, 317 pages. I’ve grown addicted to ARCs since joining Goodreads, my preference being to read actual to be published copies sufficiently ahead of the official publication date.

Except for the front cover, there are no photos included so I’m very glad my friend included information about the web site http://www.girlsfromames.com/ in her review. There are at least some photos there, and I printed them out and referred to them as I read. When I read memoirs, it really helps me to see photos and not have to imagine people’s appearances. This is one book I might have show more appreciated more if I’d not read an ARC. I hope the hardcover first edition copy is full of photos, of the 11 girls but also of their family members and others in their lives.

I wasn’t enamored of the format of the book at first. It was difficult for me to become acquainted with each of the eleven girls when so much was written about their relatives and ancestors, but I eventually saw the wisdom of the author’s decision to write the book this way. Although it took me longer to remember each of them, it was a richer experience once I was able to do so.

Also, it turns out I was most interested in some of the peripheral people.

I was most deeply touched by the story of Christie, the first child born to any the Ames girls. (This book was only a 3 star book for me until that part. I continued to enjoy the book more and more all the way through the postscripts.) I also really liked Marilyn’s father. Elwood Koelder, who was connected with Marilyn’s brother, was an interesting story line. A few of the events that happened in the most recent past were of most interest to me.

I had mixed feelings about these individuals and their group. They are ten years younger than me but, possibly given they came of age in the small town Midwest and I in a big city on the west coast, they seemed old fashioned, albeit racy. I ended up liking some more than others, but liked some aspect of each of them, although they felt sufficiently different from most of the friends I have that it was a slight stretch to think of being friends with any/most of them. Also, as I got further and further into the book I understood the friendship(s) better.

When their friendships were forming, I’m sure these girls would have considered me extremely backward and I would not have been welcome in their group.

Reading this book is bound to make women and girls think about their female friendships.

I am lucky to have a few continuing overlapping groups of women friends from my childhood/adolescence/early adulthood, made all the more precious to me because of my lack of family. My groups consist of no more than four each and the most intimacy comes from the one on one relationships. I am somewhat in awe of these 10-11 women staying in contact as they have, especially considering geographical distance, families, their differences. show less

A reviewer on Amazon hit it on the head, saying that this story needed the skills of a novelist, not a columnist. I would have preferred to read the story chronologically, even though it would have been even more confusing to keep the girls straight.

As it is, I couldn't tell you which of the girls I liked best. And there were 11 of them! Marilyn had the most interesting story. Karla's tragedy is the most moving, and yet, they aren't depicted as fully developed characters.

It's a little clinical too. I could have done without the passages analyzing women's friendships, the differences between those and men's friendships and statistics about friendships that last. Thank you, I read women's magazines. I know all this.