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Women's Fiction
What Girls Learn : A Novel

What Girls Learn : A Novel

List Price: $13.00
Your Price: $9.75
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: just another coming of age story
Review: ..albeit a well-written one. You have the absent dad, the "Anywhere But Here" bonding, the tragic illness, the burgeoning sexuality. All the right ingredients for a coming of age story. (Maybe it's harder than I think to expand the blueprint.) The main characters managed to be more than just the stereotypes expected in this kind of book, and there were some great scenes, but overall, I would give it three stars. The TV-movie made a few years ago is worth catching, though.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A probable tearjerker
Review: Karin Cook's "What Girls Learn" is one of those novels that pulls you into its story instantly. From the first page, you are intrigued by its protagonist and supporting cast, and you want to read on and on to know what's going to become of them - preferably all in one sitting.

The story's protagonist and narrator is Tilden, an intelligent and insightful girl. Upon first reading the book I missed Tilden's age at first and was sure we were hearing the narration of a seventeen (or so) year old - or even an adult in a flashback, perhaps - but the more I read, the more references I saw to the fact that she was much younger (i.e. the fact that all the girls in her class have to watch a movie about menstruation, etc.). Tilden and her younger (by a year) sister, Elizabeth - also a memorable character - are two of the four main characters in the book. The others are their mother, Frances (a.k.a. "Mama"), and her new boyfriend and eventual husband, Nick, to whose home she moves the girls at the beginning of the story.

The well-written story is often wrenchingly painful and even a bit disturbing to read, as it deals not only with the girls' mother's battle with cancer but also with other unhappy issues (i.e. preteen sex; a predatory uncle) throughout. Still, it is such a gripping story that it makes reading it all worthwhile.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Ending...good or unnecessary?
Review: This novel was a different read than I am used to reading. There were some parts that I thought were not really neccessary for getting the point across. Karen Cook could have used other senarios as opposed to molestation, death, and sexual situations. At the end of the book, the author gives the reader a false sense of completion. The last two chapters are not both needed. It should have been one or the other. Procession vs. Memory. I think that Karen Cookm should have just deleted the chapter entitled Processison and ended the book with Memory. In the Memory chapter, we are taken to the characters live three years later, ultimately giving us a good sense of closure, and who they are now. Though it is not at the same time as the previous cha[pter, it tells us the truth about death. This chapter focuses more on Tilden, the main character of the book. She is able to finish her story and tell the reader of her memories of mama. This chapter is much more true to life. We see how things really are now that the characters have been given some time to mourn and get back to real life. Tilden talks about her sister, and the mystivious life she has turned to, and how really different they both are. From the beginnning, it has always been three, mama, Tilden and Elizabeth, but now...its only two.


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