Rating: 
Summary: Never believe a truth until someone insists.....
Review: ....Or, something like that. Anyway, advice such as that is near the end of the book. I really liked this author's fresh, different perspective on life and her way of showing us how Lissy blossomed into her own being.
Told in a candid, matter-of-fact style, this author hands you fiction that is in so many ways non- but, the real deal for all of us. I feel the book definitely gets much better at the last few pages and am relieved to watch everything finally merge. Life is soooo not perfect, and Lissy shows us this from the get-go. Oddly enough, she paves an eloquence for what she's learned and been told.
I never like giving details about a book via a review, so forgive me if this sounds like I'm jumping around. I was satisfied with the book on many levels, and, having never read her before, will most likely pick her work up again.
Unique style here of the typical coming-of-age saga. Don't pass it up.
Rating: 
Summary: A well written, wonderful book
Review: Although I didn't know what to expect from Girl Talk, it was not such a touching, honest portrayal of a relationship between a mother and daughter. Our heroine, now a single advertising executive living in Manhattan, looks back on a rather bizarre summer she spent with her mother, tracing events that took place then and thinking about the effects they have had on her present life. A complicated, somewhat strange woman, Lissy's mother used this summer to tell Lissy 'the truth' about herself and her life - and it these stories that form the basis of the novel, introducing characters, revealing their experiences, and so on. The result is a complicated, touching, honest, delightful depiction of life, love, happiness, relationships, deception and so on. It's a novel that's definitely about people rather than events, and Julianna Baggott is definitely an author to watch. I was very pleasantly surprised by this book, and enjoyed it so much that I hope others will check it out as well.
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Summary: GIRL TALK is wildly funny.
Review: At its heart, GIRL TALK is about a great fear shared by many women coming of age --- becoming our mothers. It shows how it always happens when you least expect it and that there is no avoiding it. But most importantly, by the end of Julianna Baggott's stunning debut novel, one has learned to accept this fear with grace and dignity. Just like Mom would want.
Lissy Jablonski is almost 30. She is an ad executive in Manhattan. Her first love has come to stay with her and ends up marrying her stripper ex-roomate --- and Lissy is pregnant by her married ex-lover. The power of these events culminates in a comic flashback to what is know throughout the book as "the summer that never happened."
Lissy was 15 years old that summer. Her father ran off with a redheaded bank teller, and she began to realize that everything she knew about herself and her family was a lie. Amid a cast of vividly drawn characters, Lissy begins to come to terms with the secrets revealed during her comforting "girl talks" with her mother.
In an attempt to spare her daughter the humiliation of her father's moral misstep, Dotty Jablonski takes Lissy away from her New Hampshire life to the only refuge she can think of: the home of her rich college friend, Juniper Fiske. The Fiske family, including children Piper and Church, are possibly the oddest refuge for the Jablonski women during that fateful summer, considering that Lissy's parents met at Juniper's wedding. They are the type of rich people we all know: Piper is teenaged and sullen; Juniper, valium-addicted and high strung; and Church is boyishly handsome and impressionable. Perhaps the most compassionately drawn character, Church Fiske is the kind of guy that every girl has had a crush on, the kind of guy that stays with you years later, still holding onto the part of your heart that believed love was easy. When Church joins Lissy and her mother at their next refuge, his impressionable soul becomes forever wary of the life of excess he is used to. He falls in love with everything middle class and sets the tone for the man he will become.
It is also in the home of Dino and Ruby Pantuliano that Lissy gets to know more about her real father, Anthony Pantuliano. A dwarfish man with a rather impressive body, Anthony is the first --- and seemingly only --- true-love Lissy's mother ever had. Although Anthony does not know he is her father, Lissy becomes attached to the persona of him. She has both been raised by a man who loves her greatly, and created as a result of a great love. The importance of these two men in her life finds its origin during that summer that never happened. Throughout the stay with the Soprano-like Patulianos, Lissy begins to form the basis of what her therapist refers to as an Electra Complex and to learn to understand why her mother is who she is.
GIRL TALK is wildly funny and benefited much in this reading by being set in an easily identifiable era. With references to WHAM! and the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, it becomes easy to interpose oneself with Lissy. Statements such as "My earliest word association with president is crook," make the novel both timely and timeless. We could be talking about Nixon, or anyone for that matter.
Although the prose is not as lyrical as expected, it creates for Lissy a strong, clear voice. The characterization is topnotch in this novel, and although Anthony Pantuliano is drawn as less-than-perfect, the novel benefits from his failings. Lissy's mother Dotty is at times a bit of a martyr, but aren't all of our mothers? When you boil it all down, each of us can only hope to become our mothers in as graceful a way as Lissy Jablonski. May we all learn to accept the good and bad that comes with that transition, and may we all make it a bit easier for those around us with a little "girl talk."
--- Reviewed by Josette Kurey
Rating: 
Summary: I could take it or leave it
Review: Did you ever read a book that you just really didn't care about the characters one way or the other? This is that book for me. The story is told by Lissy, reflecting back on the summer when she was fifteen and her father left her and her mother to have an affair in Arizona. In that summer, 1985, Lissy learns that the man she has grown up with is not her real father. Her biological father was the one true love of her mother's life and over the course of that summer Lissy learns in sessions of "girl talk" about their young and forbidden love. The story jumps between the present, the summer of 1985 and the late sixties when her mother was a girl. This is more the mother's story than the daughter's and shows an adult appreciation for the choices her has made in her life.All in all it wasn't a bad book, but there was so much psycho babble about Electra complexes and such that it left a bad taste in my mouth. I looked forward to reading this book as I too was a 15 year old girl in 1985. While there were a few chapters set in the 1980s that were a bit nostaglic for me, the majority as I already said was set in the 1960s which didn't really hold my interest. Best advice - borrow it or check it out from the library but don't spend money to read this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Original, but cutesy and awkward
Review: For a book that at first glance appears to be just another Bridget Jones takeoff (women's-interests title, confessional first-person tone, 20-something professional or semiprofessional female narrator who loves all the wrong men and suffers the consequences), Girl Talk has an impressively original plot. The story alternates between Lissy's present-day concerns - her approaching 30th birthday and unintentional pregnancy - and a recounting of her 15th summer, during which her father left with a younger woman and her mother taught her what she has come to view as the blueprint for her own life. Surprisingly, it works. Both stories are compelling and entertaining, and the link between the two is plausible without being overbearing (the narrator avoids slipping into moralistic commentary on her past deeds). Moreover, the events of the stories are arranged to yield a pleasing resonance without seeming too contrived. Still, this is a three-star book. Its undoing is the language it's written in - tense, wooden, trying too hard. Occasionally the author breaks through with something good, but most of the time she's trying too hard to make every phrase beautiful and meaningful, yielding only a series of empty platitudes. The book's descriptive passages are lacking in quantity as well as quality, leaving the external landscape fuzzy in favor of detailing the narrator's every thought. The final pages, which are obviously designed to leave the reader with a certain sensation, fall flat. I knew what the author wanted me to feel, but I didn't feel it. In the end, all of that original plot left me with very little in the way of original thoughts. Still, this is not an unworthwhile book. It's cute. It certainly isn't bad. There's just so much out there that's very similar.
Rating:
Summary: a great read
Review: Girl Talk is a very good book! Lissy is 30, single and pregnant which is the same position her mother was in once. In Girl Talk, Lissy tell the tale of the summer that never existed. It's the summer her father ran off with another woman for the summer. Lissy and her mom go and stay with the aunt and uncle of her mom's first love. Lissy does a lot of growing up over the summer. She finds out the truth about her father and her mother tells her her story. Although the book jumps from one story to another, it isn't hard to follow and had me laughing out loud at points.
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Summary: Life's too short
Review: I felt totally ambivalent while I was reading this book. The characters didn't seem like real people to me, and I just thought the story wasn't interesing. I could have finished it without too much trouble, but I thought, what's the point? Don't waste your time on this book. Life is short. Spend it reading something really good.
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Summary: baggott's poetry is better
Review: I loved the novel Girl Talk. It was about a woman and how she and her mother had talks about her mothers life during the summer that they labeled 'the summer that never happened'. Basically, the woman decided that she had lived her life trying to be her mother. I really identified with this book because my mother and i have the exact kind of relationship. It was absolutely fantastic.
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Summary: Loved It!
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it was a lot more than I expected. For some reason, I thought Girl Talk would be a light, fluffy humorous look at mother-daughter relationships, but it's not; Girl Talk is a look back on a pivotal summer, what she calls the summer that wasn't, in a young girl's life. The Girl Talk she has with her mother is not superficial, but rather covers the truth which is so often hidden between mothers and daughters. The novel opens in the present, with Lissy (the young woman) 30 and pregnant with her married ex-lover's child. She reflects back on that summer fifteen years ago, when she and her mother flee their New Hampshire town for her mom's hometown of Bayonne, New Jersey in the hopes that it provides some guidance for what to do now. She tells us the stories of her mother's life that her mother told her, maybe they will provide her with an answer. All three stories, Lissy's current story, her mother's and their joint story fifteen years ago, are told in wonderful "girl talk", full of witty, wise and wisecracking observations. In Lissy's summer, fifteen years ago, girl talk with her mother helps her to learn that her mother is human, that her mother had a life before. This novel reminded me very much of three other novels that I love: Anywhere but Here, Welcome to my Planet and Otherwise Engaged. Lissy's voice is wise beyond her years, sarcastic and observant. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Dull MFA'd tripe
Review: If Baggott has an original voice, it certainly isn't shown in this novel. A paint-by-numbers narration and terribly dull, no one will read this in the coming years. Her poetry is a joke & frankly she's not only a bad writer, she's not a person worth remembering or talking about. Now, why am I surprised this garbage gets published?
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