Girl Stories, by Lauren Weinstein
Weinstein, Lauren (2006). Girl Stories. NY: Henry Holt. 240 pages.
Comic artist and avant garde “musician” Lauren Weinstein’s Girl Stories is a loose collection of what seem to be semi-autobiographic episodes from her teen years. I confess that this is the only book of Weinstein’s that I’ve read and, after a little bit of research, it seems like this one is a bit different from her slightly more surreal and sci-fi and fantasy influenced works (like Inside Vineyland).
Girl Stories begs the comparison to Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons and, for the most part, succeeds in replicating the tone of Barry’s novel. While Barry’s book has both bite and pathos, Weinstein doesn’t always get the combination quite right. There is plenty of pathos, to be sure, but sometimes the accompanying drawings are not as manic and desperate in tone as Barry’s are, and it is this juxtaposition that really affects the mix.
I was interested in Weinstein’s book for a couple of (personal) reasons: (1) The vignettes are set in Brookline, MA, where Weinstein grew up and where I currently live (that’s right, stalkers) and (2) Weinstein and I are approximately the same age (I’m one year older). While I don’t think that these personal connections negatively influenced my reception of the novel, I have to say that the tiny sparks of recognition (either of the setting or of a particular pop cultural ditty) were pleasant accompaniment to my reading. Girl Stories is primarily episodes in the life of an artistic outsider and depicts the all-too-familiar world of high school exclusion and random acts of jerkiness. The narrative is equal parts memory and fantasy, with Lauren/the narrator recounting her obsession with Morrissey and The Cure and the (hysterical) pretend conversations she had with them. While this is not the kind of novel one would recommend to the average Tokyo Pop reader–the narrative conventions, the artistic style of Weinstein’s work are purely of the American/Lynda Barry/R. Crumb school–this type of graphic novel (of late pushed out of the children’s and YA lit limelight by the aforementioned Tokyo Pop business) definitely has its place and its audience.