Rating: 
Summary: deeply moving memoir
Review:
This is a deeply moving memoir about life for a girl that gets in way over her head and finds that in doing so she is raped. The long journey to heal the wounds and all that the author learns from her life. I love memoirs, anything that is "truth telling and honest". This book is just that. It also speaks of a different form of abuse in this book, self abuse...as well as rape and what it is like to have been there. Like several other books I have read, Memoirs of real life courageous events such as Nightmares Echo, Running With Scissors and Lucky: A Memoir...this book ranks as tops with the others I have mentioned. I highly recommend.
Rating:
Summary: Powerfully honest and compelling
Review: A brilliant account of the author's path through adolescent sexuality that's at once disturbing, touching, and brutally honest. Dobie never spares herself in relating the teenage choices that led her from the security of a large Catholic family to a place from which she could only emerge as the person of incredible insight and strength who commited this tale to paper.
Rating: 
Summary: Are we there yet?
Review: Although Dobie has a story to tell it should have been condensed into a much smaller form. Through out the slow first half of the book Kathy Dobie is no different, or even mildly entertaining, than any other girl growing up in the suburbs. Her life story finally does take a disturbing turn down the wrong path of adolecent discovery, but her writing of it leaves you feeling indifferent towards her. This is not a story of survival and triump, it is simple muddling through a depressing life.
Rating:
Summary: Survival
Review: An amazing book. True it is difficult to read at times because of graphic situations, but an important book to read. It has the same ability to move you as "LUCKY", "NIGHTMARES ECHO" and "MY FRACTURED LIFE." Books like this show us the beauty in survival and inspire us to conquer our own inconsequencial demons.
Rating:
Summary: Survival
Review: An amazing book. True it is difficult to read at times because of graphic situations, but an important book to read. It has the same ability to move you as "LUCKY", "NIGHTMARES ECHO" and "MY FRACTURED LIFE." Books like this show us the beauty in survival and inspire us to conquer our own inconsequencial demons.
Rating:
Summary: How To Be A Girl
Review: As a sexual assault therapist, one of my teen clients once told me: "What gets you a slutty reputation is not what you do or how many times you do it," she replied, "but who you do it *with.*"This, it seems to me, is a central message of Dobie's insightful memoir: When it comes to girls and sexuality, image is everything. What Dobie-a naïve 14-year-old from a "good" Catholic family-does not understand is that reputation is all-important and there are different rules for boys and girls. She thinks that she can be one of the boys, that she can be accepted into their wild and unruly democracy. She wants to live the life her father lives, "a large life filled with drama." She wants to act, while simultaneously being acted upon-both the subject and object of desire. Even though she recognizes that women's sexuality is viewed with equal parts attraction and revulsion, she holds to the belief that she can "reap the desire and dodge the loathing." Dobie's book is about *a* sexual assault, yes, but it is about so much more than that. It is about being both insider and outsider; about the kindness and cruelty of peers; about the uniqueness of a young girl's desire; about being white and non-working-class; about "bad" boys and the contradictory expectations for men in American culture. It is about two years of one girl's life in a large family in a small town in the 1960's. If the goal of good writing is, as Anne Lamott says, "to turn the unspeakable into words-not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues," then Dobie has done just that. Her language is lyrical and specific, laced with details that capture the mood and setting of each freshly-exposed experience. The book does not aspire to the rough and randy humor of Mary Karr's "The Liar's Club," or the wry wittiness of Haven Kimmel's "A Girl Named Zippy" or the hardscrabble power of "Mama's Girl" by Veronica Chambers. In terms of subject matter, it is similar to Naomi Woolf's "Promiscuities," Deborah Kogan's "Shutterbabe," and Laurie Anderson's deftly-handled novel, "Speak." This is a memoir not so much about the perils of sexuality and risk-taking as about learning the limitations of femaleness in a hyper-masculinized culture. Those who think it is all about trauma are missing the point. Dobie bears witness to the possibility of accommodating to life in a woman's body-acquainted with but uncontained by fear.
Rating: 
Summary: less than authentic
Review: as a therapist who has worked with many girls and families where promiscuity was an issue, i have difficulty believing the family description in this story. children who are sexualized and treated as objects often behave as did kathy. because families conspire to keep the fantasy of family life alive, the child who acts out sexual problems will blame her/himself to continue receiving whatever love and parenting he/she can glean. there were many clues in this book about the true state of affairs. mother's kitchen full of spiritual quotes, her response to a boozed up, crying kathy who spills the truth about her relationship with jim. sounds like mom may have sufferred with something like depression and possible alcoholism. remember the book opens with bill's inability to live at home. dad's response to kathy's crisis babysitting was utterly selfish and abusive to his daughter. his absence calls into question the basic marriage stucture to this family. if these people came to my office i'd look to causes for kathy's behavior. this was not a curious, healthy expression of sex, but a desperate child's attempt to find security and love in the way she perceived she could get it.
Rating:
Summary: Very difficult read...
Review: But only because of the subject matter. The book is well written, and obviously very well thought out. Her candor is unflinching, and I can only imagine how difficult this book must have been to write.
One thing that stood out to me about this book, is that Dobie didn't waste all of her pages with blame. I'm sure there is regret and quite a bit of pain associated with a childhood such as hers, but she just stated the facts. She told her story from beginning to end and drew you into her world.
I read this book with a sense of being an eavesdropper. I stood on the street in front of her house... I met her childhood friend.... I stood outside the car that night.... such is her writing. She describes her entire world with such vibrancy that you can't help feeling you're right there with her.
I was impressed by her honesty, and even more impressed with her unashamed depicition of such a difficult time in her life. Sexuality is a very difficult pill to swallow at that age - at any age for some people. She has definitely come through this as someone to be admired.
Rating: 
Summary: a strong read
Review: Dobie has a real gift for storytelling, and in this memoir of her childhood and teenage years she demonstrates just how enthralling she can be. Although the ostensible subject of "The Only Girl in the Car" is the author's sexuality during her teenage years, much of the book is devoted to a detailed recounting of her childhood, and this is perhaps the most interesting part of the book. The middle portion of the book recounts Dobie's sexual escapades as a teenager, culminating in the night she had sex with her boyfriend and his three friends in the backseat of his car. Afterwards, she must grapple with the negative reputation she's acquired, which she accomplishes by repackaging herself as a studious loner. Much has been made of the scene of Dobie and her boyfriend's buddies (including the memoir's title), but it lacks the dramatic impact one would expect. It's apparent that on this night does she finally understands that she is neither respected nor loved by her boyfriend or his friends, and that she is reviled by much of her peer group. And it's certainly clear why she'd be upset at her boyfriend for coercing her into a degrading experience. But the emotional power of the scene is absent; Dobie's storytelling powers fail this most crucial test, and because the reader has been left out of the book's climactic scene, it's difficult to reinvest in the remainder of the book. Still, there is a lot of value in the book. It's a demonstration of great strength on the part of its author. The book may seem lopsided in its lack of context; Dobie makes no effort to place her story in the larger feminist discourse. But it's still an important book, because it's important to her. It's one woman's story of how her life was, told in her own voice and on her own terms, and not only does she deserve applause for having written it, she also deserves a readership that appreciates her experience and the charm, resolve, and wit with which she recounts it.
Rating:
Summary: Her writing paints the canvas of the mind and pulls you in..
Review: I am not one for personal memoirs, but I was compelled to read this one. I had heard Kathy Dobie being interviewed on a local Chicago radio station, and I was impressed with her plain-spokeness and down-to-earth quality of speaking. Then when I was in the bookstore, I purchased it and when I started reading it I was pulled into it. She painted such a picture of her family and her life growing up in the '60-70's, that it became a hologram and I was watching a movie in my head. She is quite a writer and I hope she does more. Definitely worth the time to check out this one!
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