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Green Girl
With the fierce emotional and intellectual power of such classics as Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and Clarice Lispector's The Hour of the Star, Kate Zambreno's novel Green Girl is a provocative, sharply etched portrait of a young woman navigating the spectrum between anomie and epiphany.
First published in 2011 in a small press edition, Green Girl was named one of the best books of the year by critics including Dennis Cooper and Roxane Gay. In Bookforum, James Greer called it ambitious in a way few works of fiction are. This summer it is being republished in an all-new Harper Perennial trade paperback, significantly revised by the author, and including an extensive P.S. section including never before published outtakes, an interview with the author, and a new essay by Zambreno.
Zambreno's heroine, Ruth, is a young American in London, kin to Jean Seberg gamines and contemporary celebutantes, by day spritzing perfume at the department store she calls Horrids, by night trying desperately to navigate a world colored by the unwanted gaze of others and the uncertainty of her own self-regard. Ruth, the green girl, joins the canon of young people existing in that important, frightening, and exhilarating period of drift and anxiety between youth and adulthood, and her story is told through the eyes of one of the most surprising and unforgettable narrators in recent fiction—a voice at once distanced and maternal, indulgent yet blackly funny. And the result is a piercing yet humane meditation on alienation, consumerism, the city, self-awareness, and desire, by a novelist who has been compared with Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, and Elfriede Jelinek.
First published in 2011 in a small press edition, Green Girl was named one of the best books of the year by critics including Dennis Cooper and Roxane Gay. In Bookforum, James Greer called it ambitious in a way few works of fiction are. This summer it is being republished in an all-new Harper Perennial trade paperback, significantly revised by the author, and including an extensive P.S. section including never before published outtakes, an interview with the author, and a new essay by Zambreno.
Zambreno's heroine, Ruth, is a young American in London, kin to Jean Seberg gamines and contemporary celebutantes, by day spritzing perfume at the department store she calls Horrids, by night trying desperately to navigate a world colored by the unwanted gaze of others and the uncertainty of her own self-regard. Ruth, the green girl, joins the canon of young people existing in that important, frightening, and exhilarating period of drift and anxiety between youth and adulthood, and her story is told through the eyes of one of the most surprising and unforgettable narrators in recent fiction—a voice at once distanced and maternal, indulgent yet blackly funny. And the result is a piercing yet humane meditation on alienation, consumerism, the city, self-awareness, and desire, by a novelist who has been compared with Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, and Elfriede Jelinek.
279 pages, Paperback
First published September 16, 2011
About the author
Kate Zambreno
25 books765 followersKate Zambreno is the author of the novels Green Girl (Harper Perennial) and O Fallen Angel (Harper Perennial). She is also the author of Heroines (Semiotext(e)'s Active Agents) and Book of Mutter (Semiotexte(e)'s Native Agents). A collection of talks and essays, The Appendix Project, is forthcoming from Semiotext(e) in April 2019, and a collection of stories and other writing, Screen Tests, is forthcoming from Harper Perennial in June 2019. She is at work on a novel, Drifts, and a study of Hervé Guibert. She teaches at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 357 reviews
February 8, 2012
maybe you grew up, like me, reading a million different narratives about what it felt like to be angry and young and male (and usually white.) maybe, like me, you also read nancy drew and sweet valley high and anne of green gables, young women with nerve and pluck but also mostly young women whose problems were solved at the end of each book. and then as i got older, it was sylvia plath and carson mccullers and jean rhys and maya angelou, and and. i've never stopped being hungry for narratives where there is no neat package at the end. i want to imagine, at the end of these lives, that things keep being complicated and you keep working on them and you get smarter, and stronger, but probably there is always going to be a heaviness to contend with. sometimes that heaviness is tied inextricably to gender, sometimes not. but green girl entered the world as a novel who offers those things. is funny and strange and about the shopgirl trap (i, let it be known, have been a shopgirl for far too many years.) it's about empty fucking and crippling depression and fighting your way out of those things, or not, because all you can do is stare at your blank bedroom wall for three weeks. this is not exactly a review but it is me imploring you to read this book.
May 3, 2017
Poorly written with zero plot line and two dimensional characters. Half the book was excerpts from other pieces of writings or quotes and they were the only part of the novel that were any good. I understand the writing style the author was trying to go for but it just didn't work. Everything was vague and boring. I didn't feel invested in it while reading it at all.
April 6, 2022
Green girl doesn’t have an obvious plot which was hard to grasp at first however, I enjoyed it none the less. In fact by the time I finished it I was wishing there was more.
March 15, 2012
If you’re like me, your 20s are packed in a triple taped box and hiding in the dingiest attic corner of your brain beneath garbage bags filled with clothes for Goodwill and that easel you bought the day you decided (in your 20s!) that maybe you were a painter.
This was not my shining-est decade. If I wasn’t the grand master world champion of compartmentalizing, I would be in a constant state of cringing shame over things said, did, that blond phase and people wronged. Luckily, that thing calm-looking, even-keeled 30-somethings say about their “30s being so great, so much better than their 20s,” etc. isn’t the bullshit a 20-something might believe it to be. It is so true that it is almost purple.
I see smart 20-somethings. They have informed opinions and interesting hobbies and a whole satchel of sharp life skills. That wasn’t me, though, and it isn’t the young woman in the lead role of Kate Zambreno’s keep-it-coming-on-the-cringe novel “Green Girl.” Ruth is young with a dead mother and an old relationship in her craw. She’s living in London and working as a perfume spritzer, poorly pimping a scent called “Desire.” She works with a gaggle of bitches who gossip about how she smiles too much and she has one friend, an Australian named Agnes with a hair trigger on her hair dye finger. Ruth might quit. She has that tendency to just leave a job mid-shift or not show up the next day. She might fall for Ollie, the resident heartthrob who is giving her the eye and she might bang a bartender in the basement of a bar seemingly because here she is in the basement and now their clothes have come off.
For the entire book, Ruth is in a mood. She’s fragile. She’s bored. She needs attention but doesn’t want attention. She’s barely conscious and she’s malleable.
Sometimes she is the star of her own movie, sometimes she is a character in that movie just saying lines. Speaking of movies, they are at the center of this book. Ruth and Agnes are like Siskel and Ebert in the depths of their film catalogues, if Siskel and Ebert only critiqued at surface level: Edie Sedgwick’s hair or Ingrid Bergman’s character in “Gaslight.”
Not much happens in this book beyond walks to work and home from work, interactions with coworkers and a threesome that is more like a two-and-a-half-some. It’s told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who is seemingly watching young Ruth from a safe place. Like, maybe, Ruth in her 30s. This narrator makes rare commentary and when she does, she isn’t coddling Ruth or making excuses for her behavior but she also isn’t spitting over her actions or lack thereof. It’s a little bit like scientific poetry and “Look what she’s going to do now” with a head shake. She seems to just wish for Ruth to move beyond this phase and maybe the knowledge that she does.
“I want to choke these youngsters just to hear them make a sound not banal or repeated or well-behaved. If I choked Ruth she would make a squeaking sound, like a rubber doll. But I won’t choke Ruth why would I choke her I love her. If I did choke her it would be in a loving way, like the poster of the Heimlich maneuver you see hung up in school cafeterias and auto shops, the two faceless figures doubled over together in a violent embrace. I would choke her to get at her insides.”
I have a hunch this book could be enjoyed by people who are 22 or 32, but that both would take something different from it. The 22 year old would see the angst and the struggle and maybe say “That’s me.” The 36 year old might see the angst, squirm at its familiarity, and say “That was me.” (I can’t lie. There are complete sentences in this book that I have stuffed into that attic in the brain under those clothes. Most creepily when Ruth is walking and feels like someone is going to come up behind her and stab her). I also have a hunch that some people couldn’t enjoy this book. They would see this girl with her soft fontanel and find her exhausting -- like the sneering party companions of her much-older lover treat her. To me this feels like Zambreno’s unflinching look straight into the muck and guts of an ugly period of time in Ruth’s life. It feels really honest.
This was not my shining-est decade. If I wasn’t the grand master world champion of compartmentalizing, I would be in a constant state of cringing shame over things said, did, that blond phase and people wronged. Luckily, that thing calm-looking, even-keeled 30-somethings say about their “30s being so great, so much better than their 20s,” etc. isn’t the bullshit a 20-something might believe it to be. It is so true that it is almost purple.
I see smart 20-somethings. They have informed opinions and interesting hobbies and a whole satchel of sharp life skills. That wasn’t me, though, and it isn’t the young woman in the lead role of Kate Zambreno’s keep-it-coming-on-the-cringe novel “Green Girl.” Ruth is young with a dead mother and an old relationship in her craw. She’s living in London and working as a perfume spritzer, poorly pimping a scent called “Desire.” She works with a gaggle of bitches who gossip about how she smiles too much and she has one friend, an Australian named Agnes with a hair trigger on her hair dye finger. Ruth might quit. She has that tendency to just leave a job mid-shift or not show up the next day. She might fall for Ollie, the resident heartthrob who is giving her the eye and she might bang a bartender in the basement of a bar seemingly because here she is in the basement and now their clothes have come off.
For the entire book, Ruth is in a mood. She’s fragile. She’s bored. She needs attention but doesn’t want attention. She’s barely conscious and she’s malleable.
Sometimes she is the star of her own movie, sometimes she is a character in that movie just saying lines. Speaking of movies, they are at the center of this book. Ruth and Agnes are like Siskel and Ebert in the depths of their film catalogues, if Siskel and Ebert only critiqued at surface level: Edie Sedgwick’s hair or Ingrid Bergman’s character in “Gaslight.”
Not much happens in this book beyond walks to work and home from work, interactions with coworkers and a threesome that is more like a two-and-a-half-some. It’s told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who is seemingly watching young Ruth from a safe place. Like, maybe, Ruth in her 30s. This narrator makes rare commentary and when she does, she isn’t coddling Ruth or making excuses for her behavior but she also isn’t spitting over her actions or lack thereof. It’s a little bit like scientific poetry and “Look what she’s going to do now” with a head shake. She seems to just wish for Ruth to move beyond this phase and maybe the knowledge that she does.
“I want to choke these youngsters just to hear them make a sound not banal or repeated or well-behaved. If I choked Ruth she would make a squeaking sound, like a rubber doll. But I won’t choke Ruth why would I choke her I love her. If I did choke her it would be in a loving way, like the poster of the Heimlich maneuver you see hung up in school cafeterias and auto shops, the two faceless figures doubled over together in a violent embrace. I would choke her to get at her insides.”
I have a hunch this book could be enjoyed by people who are 22 or 32, but that both would take something different from it. The 22 year old would see the angst and the struggle and maybe say “That’s me.” The 36 year old might see the angst, squirm at its familiarity, and say “That was me.” (I can’t lie. There are complete sentences in this book that I have stuffed into that attic in the brain under those clothes. Most creepily when Ruth is walking and feels like someone is going to come up behind her and stab her). I also have a hunch that some people couldn’t enjoy this book. They would see this girl with her soft fontanel and find her exhausting -- like the sneering party companions of her much-older lover treat her. To me this feels like Zambreno’s unflinching look straight into the muck and guts of an ugly period of time in Ruth’s life. It feels really honest.
October 2, 2022
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I found this book on a list of transgressive women's fiction. GREEN GIRL, by the author's definition, is sort of like a depressed ingenue. Picture a Shirley Manson music video or any '90s Winona Ryder character, and that's basically our heroine, Ruth. She is a sad clown, but in girl form. There's no real plot to GREEN GIRL. In the afterword, it seems like this character was written with the old cinema trope of the "shopgirl" in mind, and I can see that; it's a symbolism that's forcibly emphasized with epigrams from old Hollywood movies.
GREEN GIRL is a good book but if you don't like "unlikable" female characters or stream-of-consciousness, character-driven stories, you won't like this book. Sometimes the writing style could be grating but most of the time I really loved it. There's a sort of poetry to the writing, which I think is why this book is being compared to THE BELL JAR. Some people are saying this is a bad comparison but I don't think it is. Both books are about women who are depressed and don't really know how to even really exist in the midst of all their exhaustion. The only difference is the zeitgeist, and what ennui looks like in different decades, in different venues.
I used to read a lot of literary fiction when I was younger and still defined myself by the media that I consumed, but I stopped because most of the voices getting lauded were white, cis-gendered men, and when only one sort of voice is dominating the narrative, things can get a little boring. I wish I'd had more access to books like these when I was a younger woman: books about women who aren't happy, who struggle to exist, who aren't good people but who are still entitled to their stories. Reading GREEN GIRL made me appreciate that now, we're finally starting to get those stories and they're finally getting some airspace-- not just for white women, but for the LGBT+ and women of color, too.
If you know of any other books about women toiling under the weight of their malaise, please send me recs. Books like WHITE OLEANDER and THE BELL JAR made me realize that yes, I actually do enjoy literary fiction if the stories resonate and the characters are interesting.
3 to 3.5 stars
March 11, 2012
There's a film star from the golden age of Hollywood that never leaves her house anymore. I think it's Lauren Bacall, but there's a chance I'm wrong about this. I'm pretty sure it's Bacall because I know this actress was awarded the San Sebastián International Film Festival life time achievement award and Bacall definitely got that. It's not important who it is. The point is that this person wants to preserve her celluloid beauty in the eyes of those who participate in that whole beauty is in the eyes of the beholder thing by never being seen in her wrinkles and all state. Time stands still, etc. It might have been Bette Davis too. It may be a common sickness in those who feed on that mutual exchange. My point is that Green Girl by Kate Zambreno is the Barbie doll daughter of the mother who names her plastic and painted eye dream extension after whatever gem she covets. Hollywood Barbie. When I was little my playmates all named their dolls Crystal (I did not! I was a gifted Barbie storyteller, dammit). These diamonds are film stars. Names on star blocks on sidewalk cement blocks, not walking across dreams of people who need them (you know, nothing good).
I kind of want to give a huge fuck you to Kate Zambreno for this passage. I want to know where she got off including this in her book. Deep down I kind of hate Green Girl for this.
Bye. Feather-voiced. Sending up the American blonde. She is an actress. She is playing herself. She is ready for her screen test. I can think of several blonde Hollywood actresses who could play the part well, yet I do not know their names. They are not as memorable as the classics, Marilyn or Jean, those starry creations that burned bright, died young. I think of young celebrities in the media, stalked by our eyes, the paparazzi, those magazines we read. They exist to draw attention. Aware of the whole world watching. They are green girls too. We give birth to them. Then we destroy them with our insatiable desire to have entrance into their private lives. This is them unmasked without makeup, waiting in a queue at the grocery store, blinking from a sex tape... We watch and watch."
Fuck you, Zambreno! Speak for yourself. Ruth would make that tape herself. If she had a goodreads profile page she would have 3,000 male friends, underwear photos, no books and hundreds of meaningful quotes that she didn't understand. She would say the same thing about another girl.
All I can do is look at her breasts. She has perfect French breasts. They are pert and taut with brownish-pink nipples. I want to stroke them. I am in awe of these lovely breasts- not like mine at all, maternal and massive and saggy."
She is, speaking for herself. The mother without the womb who plays with her doll. One of those sucky Barbies that had hard legs that you couldn't pose into anything. Mommy doesn't know how to put the head back on. Do you remember when they had those balls for necks that would get stuck inside? I would beg my mother to fix them and she would be too busy. They come with the stand and you probably weren't supposed to open the box. A collectible.
The Bell Jar comparison is dead wrong. No, no, no. Where do they even get this shit? The Bell Jar is about how it isn't worth it to fall apart. You end up right where you already were. You don't do it to look good! If you can't help it... That's it. Zambreno's quote usage points to Jean Rhys (twice). Both quotations are from Good Morning, Midnight. Her whole job scene is straight out of that book. Homage or rip off? They were my favorite parts of this book too. I believed the mean girls who ruled the perfume section in the department store (Chanel is the roost ruler, naturally). The other girl who collects information, probably so they'll leave her alone. I know how those kind of cliques work. The job quitting, the tears, the boss... All of it was out of Rhys's book. I'm just saying! Like Rhys book, Ruth has no inclination at all of other people. She could watch them forever and never get any of it. It's a black hole eye socket thing. And there were multiple Clarice Lispector quotes. I didn't read Hour of the Star but I did read Soulstorm (not a favorite). Intentions... Lots and lots of quotes to point to intentions about identity crisis from where the author is sitting. Self awareness of not being real stuff. This crisis is how to be narcissistic and have no personality to be narcissistic about! The Lispector quotes refer to writing yourself, being a character in a novel, right? How do you be a character without understanding what a character is? Why did Kate Zambreno write about a magazine model? This year's girl is disaffected youth. Cut her hair, new outfit, a dream car, a dream house, Ken on one arm, or what was her new boyfriend's name?
That's why that sex tape blinking quote made me so mad (and it is early on in the book!).
One, don't fucking assume that everyone else sees magazine pictures in people. If you are going to write about a person and then turn around and say shit about people watching? What the hell is the point in writing if that is how you see it? Green Girls are used to people watching them blah blah. Green Girls WANT to be watched, if this is what a Green Girl is. Ruth masturbates (this is not a comparison of mine. This is an actual scene in the book) to the idea of being pretty, and of others finding her prettier than they already do. If Green Girls are all the same and yet Agnes the Green Girl is to be scorned and Ruth is the Green Girl to watch on the windows of tvs, houses, buses, microwaves, ovens, showers... All she wants is to be watched. Nothing more, nothing gained. Green Girl is taken from a line from Hamlet. If you see Ophelia as a beautiful image drowning, nothing more. If you see Anna Karina's blue tights in Une femme est une femme and not the struggle for communication... If you saw Persona as two pretty women and not how we never know anyone. Aren't people assholes for thinking they know 100%? And aren't they assholes if they don't at least try to know something about someone else? I don't give a shit about perfect French breasts! Wasn't Belle de Jour about annihilating oneself in dirt? To be pure by not being your own will at all? Green Girl TRIES to be that by posing as it in a magazine pictorial. See girl sleep with men. See girl in her Zara black outfit. She mentions all of these films and books and actresses and didn't get anything about what they were saying. Don't quote repairing cracks from Repulsion to me when you never saw any to begin with! You... cheat! Mouths form the words and they say things and they would keep the cracks if someone told them they looked good. Lies.
Why is Kate Zambreno's girl this girl who is nothing? Why did she state these intentions in all of these quotes and then belie them all with the meaningless posing of the book? Why talk about writing yourself in quotes and then feel nothing? Books feel! If you don't know that then you don't know how to read what you are reading. What happens when you succeed in losing yourself in the crowd that you do not look at? The din drowns out what noise? If you didn't hear anything in the first place?
I did like the part when Ruth visits the "little black dress" that she cannot afford. The other shopgirls look like French New Wave actresses like Anna Karina. She is pleased that to be looking like they do like they are in the movie. At least I had an idea of one thing she wanted to be a part of. I wish I knew why Zambreno wanted that image. Godard didn't just make a great looking dance scene in Bande a part! Dance feels like moving. You follow them with your eyes in your limbs, and your heart jumps and your soul flies. How can you not notice when Odile (Anna Karina) still uses the traffic hand signals on her bicycle even though the roads are deserted? Those little things that say what kind of a person she is? The dancing, the running, the free. I think it says a lot about what a person reaches for. I think it says a lot that Zambreno reached for this Green Girl who was a symbol without the little things. I know about not feeling like I belong anywhere. I know about suspecting that other people think I don't belong with them. But I also know that when you're lonely you go looking for what you can get. You don't think that outfits are the only thing worth watching. I wouldn't create a person for myself and still be more alone and not think THAT was the important thing being said. Zambreno shouldn't have relied on those quotes. It was important that she wrote herself wanting Ruth to be beaten and alone. That is what appealed to her. The blank alone. Meaningless sex. (The ex boyfriend pining doesn't count. He isn't special to her other than the abuse she craved. A stand in for the author herself, I think. Still alone with the blind.)
How can watching and noticing those little glimpses be wrong? It isn't ownership. It doesn't erase. It's being on the same planet as someone else. How can you write and not feel that way?
To be honest, I wasn't that pleased with all of the namedropping. I was feeling bad about not really liking those last two Jean Rhys books that I read. That she either betrayed me or I betrayed her. Of course, the first chapter (or was it the second?) has the Jean Rhys quote and then Zambreno tries so hard to be like Rhys without getting why Rhys was great. She got why I didn't like those last two Rhys books. The worship of the victim's pain as an outfit and oh how awful the whole world is because some man didn't give them what they wanted. Like everyone isn't trying to be happy and they aren't the only voice we are going to be able to hear. It's a lot to hear! Why not give them a voice, then? And listen? Why just cry about not being looked at? Then say fuck you for looking? I don't get you, Zambreno. I don't think I like you, to be honest.
This is my Madonna Vogue rap of everything name dropped in Green Girl that I know about (there's more but I did know almost all of it. Because I care about trying to know about other people, not because I think that tights in mini skirts are the sum of the parts):
Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Baudelaire, 2 ou 2 choses que je sais d'elle, Monica Vitti, Hanna Schygulla, Corinne Marchand, Anouk Aimee, Rita Hayworth, Greta Garbo, Breathless, Repulsion, Catherine Deneuve, Jean Seberg, Roman Holiday, Persona, Nausea, Blow-up, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, Emily Dickinson, Ava Gardner, Virginia Woolf, Jackie O'nassis, Blue Velvet, Belle de Jour, Rainer Maria Rilke, Cleo de 5 a 7, Stage Door, Like a Virgin, The Night Porter, Charlotte Rampling, Nadja, Mary Poppins, The Women, Alfred Hitchcock, Jacques Tati's Playtime, Good morning, Midnight, Eliza Doolittle, Mia farrow, Camera Lucida, Marilyn Monroe, Jean Seberg, Lauren Bacall, Clara bow, Anna Karina, Klute, Clarice Lispector, Audrey Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Hamlet, Rope, The Big Sleep, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Joan of Arc, Falconetti, Rosemary's Baby, Bonjour Tristesse, A streetcar Mamed Desire, Othello, Swan lake, Veronica lake, Masculin feminin, The Vagabonde, Gaslight, The Smiths' There Is a light that never goes out, Michael Jackson's Thriller, The young girls of rochefort, Andy warhol's kitchen, Darling, Julie christie, This side of paradise, Tender is the night, Lolita, Ulysses, Alice in wonderland...
I was thinking about Madonna while reading this. The whole appropriating images of others without knowing what they mean thing. She did appear (like a virgin Karoake suggested by Agnes. I kind of liked Agnes. I was pissed off that she's relegated to watching Ruth along with Zambreno). I had also been wondering why there wasn't music in this (one Smiths quote- unidentified! It was There is a Light that Never Goes Out). And she bobs her head to Michael Jackson's Thriller. One of the highlights, the bobbing. Of course there is no music. Ruth doesn't dance. She poses. I could have done without the "green girl" stuff, if Ruth was held above as special in her pain and their minds were imagined to be empty. I could imagine their dreams being more. People aren't the same because of how they dress. What was the connection between them all? I'm lost, she's lost, they are all lost. It's what I already said about what we reach for, I think. Why can't they? I think Zambreno would rather throw away. She wouldn't leave the apartment if someone would see the corpse after it started rotting past her desired composed. Do you dance? On strings? Cut Ruth's, please.
To quote a line that Kate Winslet says in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (I can namedrop better than she can because I have devoted my life to looking for connections)... I'm feeling Ruthless. She was also pretending to be a Ruth. Zambreno didn't get to be Ruth, even in a photograph. Ruth is a billboard. Don't stop. Pretending. My baby is a centerfold!
P.s. What the fuck was with all the confusion over English slang like "loo" and "lift" and "jumper"? I don't remember not knowing that stuff and I'm also American. I don't believe that a girl who watches as many films as Ruth is supposed to have would ever be confused by those differences even the Harry Potter editors saw fit to leave in! Come on! I just don't believe you can watch this much and get NOTHING else. Dresses. Just watch the Oscars, girl. Awards seem to be your scene (or they are Zambreno's. Ruth isn't real).
I kind of want to give a huge fuck you to Kate Zambreno for this passage. I want to know where she got off including this in her book. Deep down I kind of hate Green Girl for this.
Bye. Feather-voiced. Sending up the American blonde. She is an actress. She is playing herself. She is ready for her screen test. I can think of several blonde Hollywood actresses who could play the part well, yet I do not know their names. They are not as memorable as the classics, Marilyn or Jean, those starry creations that burned bright, died young. I think of young celebrities in the media, stalked by our eyes, the paparazzi, those magazines we read. They exist to draw attention. Aware of the whole world watching. They are green girls too. We give birth to them. Then we destroy them with our insatiable desire to have entrance into their private lives. This is them unmasked without makeup, waiting in a queue at the grocery store, blinking from a sex tape... We watch and watch."
Fuck you, Zambreno! Speak for yourself. Ruth would make that tape herself. If she had a goodreads profile page she would have 3,000 male friends, underwear photos, no books and hundreds of meaningful quotes that she didn't understand. She would say the same thing about another girl.
All I can do is look at her breasts. She has perfect French breasts. They are pert and taut with brownish-pink nipples. I want to stroke them. I am in awe of these lovely breasts- not like mine at all, maternal and massive and saggy."
She is, speaking for herself. The mother without the womb who plays with her doll. One of those sucky Barbies that had hard legs that you couldn't pose into anything. Mommy doesn't know how to put the head back on. Do you remember when they had those balls for necks that would get stuck inside? I would beg my mother to fix them and she would be too busy. They come with the stand and you probably weren't supposed to open the box. A collectible.
The Bell Jar comparison is dead wrong. No, no, no. Where do they even get this shit? The Bell Jar is about how it isn't worth it to fall apart. You end up right where you already were. You don't do it to look good! If you can't help it... That's it. Zambreno's quote usage points to Jean Rhys (twice). Both quotations are from Good Morning, Midnight. Her whole job scene is straight out of that book. Homage or rip off? They were my favorite parts of this book too. I believed the mean girls who ruled the perfume section in the department store (Chanel is the roost ruler, naturally). The other girl who collects information, probably so they'll leave her alone. I know how those kind of cliques work. The job quitting, the tears, the boss... All of it was out of Rhys's book. I'm just saying! Like Rhys book, Ruth has no inclination at all of other people. She could watch them forever and never get any of it. It's a black hole eye socket thing. And there were multiple Clarice Lispector quotes. I didn't read Hour of the Star but I did read Soulstorm (not a favorite). Intentions... Lots and lots of quotes to point to intentions about identity crisis from where the author is sitting. Self awareness of not being real stuff. This crisis is how to be narcissistic and have no personality to be narcissistic about! The Lispector quotes refer to writing yourself, being a character in a novel, right? How do you be a character without understanding what a character is? Why did Kate Zambreno write about a magazine model? This year's girl is disaffected youth. Cut her hair, new outfit, a dream car, a dream house, Ken on one arm, or what was her new boyfriend's name?
That's why that sex tape blinking quote made me so mad (and it is early on in the book!).
One, don't fucking assume that everyone else sees magazine pictures in people. If you are going to write about a person and then turn around and say shit about people watching? What the hell is the point in writing if that is how you see it? Green Girls are used to people watching them blah blah. Green Girls WANT to be watched, if this is what a Green Girl is. Ruth masturbates (this is not a comparison of mine. This is an actual scene in the book) to the idea of being pretty, and of others finding her prettier than they already do. If Green Girls are all the same and yet Agnes the Green Girl is to be scorned and Ruth is the Green Girl to watch on the windows of tvs, houses, buses, microwaves, ovens, showers... All she wants is to be watched. Nothing more, nothing gained. Green Girl is taken from a line from Hamlet. If you see Ophelia as a beautiful image drowning, nothing more. If you see Anna Karina's blue tights in Une femme est une femme and not the struggle for communication... If you saw Persona as two pretty women and not how we never know anyone. Aren't people assholes for thinking they know 100%? And aren't they assholes if they don't at least try to know something about someone else? I don't give a shit about perfect French breasts! Wasn't Belle de Jour about annihilating oneself in dirt? To be pure by not being your own will at all? Green Girl TRIES to be that by posing as it in a magazine pictorial. See girl sleep with men. See girl in her Zara black outfit. She mentions all of these films and books and actresses and didn't get anything about what they were saying. Don't quote repairing cracks from Repulsion to me when you never saw any to begin with! You... cheat! Mouths form the words and they say things and they would keep the cracks if someone told them they looked good. Lies.
Why is Kate Zambreno's girl this girl who is nothing? Why did she state these intentions in all of these quotes and then belie them all with the meaningless posing of the book? Why talk about writing yourself in quotes and then feel nothing? Books feel! If you don't know that then you don't know how to read what you are reading. What happens when you succeed in losing yourself in the crowd that you do not look at? The din drowns out what noise? If you didn't hear anything in the first place?
I did like the part when Ruth visits the "little black dress" that she cannot afford. The other shopgirls look like French New Wave actresses like Anna Karina. She is pleased that to be looking like they do like they are in the movie. At least I had an idea of one thing she wanted to be a part of. I wish I knew why Zambreno wanted that image. Godard didn't just make a great looking dance scene in Bande a part! Dance feels like moving. You follow them with your eyes in your limbs, and your heart jumps and your soul flies. How can you not notice when Odile (Anna Karina) still uses the traffic hand signals on her bicycle even though the roads are deserted? Those little things that say what kind of a person she is? The dancing, the running, the free. I think it says a lot about what a person reaches for. I think it says a lot that Zambreno reached for this Green Girl who was a symbol without the little things. I know about not feeling like I belong anywhere. I know about suspecting that other people think I don't belong with them. But I also know that when you're lonely you go looking for what you can get. You don't think that outfits are the only thing worth watching. I wouldn't create a person for myself and still be more alone and not think THAT was the important thing being said. Zambreno shouldn't have relied on those quotes. It was important that she wrote herself wanting Ruth to be beaten and alone. That is what appealed to her. The blank alone. Meaningless sex. (The ex boyfriend pining doesn't count. He isn't special to her other than the abuse she craved. A stand in for the author herself, I think. Still alone with the blind.)
How can watching and noticing those little glimpses be wrong? It isn't ownership. It doesn't erase. It's being on the same planet as someone else. How can you write and not feel that way?
To be honest, I wasn't that pleased with all of the namedropping. I was feeling bad about not really liking those last two Jean Rhys books that I read. That she either betrayed me or I betrayed her. Of course, the first chapter (or was it the second?) has the Jean Rhys quote and then Zambreno tries so hard to be like Rhys without getting why Rhys was great. She got why I didn't like those last two Rhys books. The worship of the victim's pain as an outfit and oh how awful the whole world is because some man didn't give them what they wanted. Like everyone isn't trying to be happy and they aren't the only voice we are going to be able to hear. It's a lot to hear! Why not give them a voice, then? And listen? Why just cry about not being looked at? Then say fuck you for looking? I don't get you, Zambreno. I don't think I like you, to be honest.
This is my Madonna Vogue rap of everything name dropped in Green Girl that I know about (there's more but I did know almost all of it. Because I care about trying to know about other people, not because I think that tights in mini skirts are the sum of the parts):
Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Baudelaire, 2 ou 2 choses que je sais d'elle, Monica Vitti, Hanna Schygulla, Corinne Marchand, Anouk Aimee, Rita Hayworth, Greta Garbo, Breathless, Repulsion, Catherine Deneuve, Jean Seberg, Roman Holiday, Persona, Nausea, Blow-up, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, Emily Dickinson, Ava Gardner, Virginia Woolf, Jackie O'nassis, Blue Velvet, Belle de Jour, Rainer Maria Rilke, Cleo de 5 a 7, Stage Door, Like a Virgin, The Night Porter, Charlotte Rampling, Nadja, Mary Poppins, The Women, Alfred Hitchcock, Jacques Tati's Playtime, Good morning, Midnight, Eliza Doolittle, Mia farrow, Camera Lucida, Marilyn Monroe, Jean Seberg, Lauren Bacall, Clara bow, Anna Karina, Klute, Clarice Lispector, Audrey Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Hamlet, Rope, The Big Sleep, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Joan of Arc, Falconetti, Rosemary's Baby, Bonjour Tristesse, A streetcar Mamed Desire, Othello, Swan lake, Veronica lake, Masculin feminin, The Vagabonde, Gaslight, The Smiths' There Is a light that never goes out, Michael Jackson's Thriller, The young girls of rochefort, Andy warhol's kitchen, Darling, Julie christie, This side of paradise, Tender is the night, Lolita, Ulysses, Alice in wonderland...
I was thinking about Madonna while reading this. The whole appropriating images of others without knowing what they mean thing. She did appear (like a virgin Karoake suggested by Agnes. I kind of liked Agnes. I was pissed off that she's relegated to watching Ruth along with Zambreno). I had also been wondering why there wasn't music in this (one Smiths quote- unidentified! It was There is a Light that Never Goes Out). And she bobs her head to Michael Jackson's Thriller. One of the highlights, the bobbing. Of course there is no music. Ruth doesn't dance. She poses. I could have done without the "green girl" stuff, if Ruth was held above as special in her pain and their minds were imagined to be empty. I could imagine their dreams being more. People aren't the same because of how they dress. What was the connection between them all? I'm lost, she's lost, they are all lost. It's what I already said about what we reach for, I think. Why can't they? I think Zambreno would rather throw away. She wouldn't leave the apartment if someone would see the corpse after it started rotting past her desired composed. Do you dance? On strings? Cut Ruth's, please.
To quote a line that Kate Winslet says in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (I can namedrop better than she can because I have devoted my life to looking for connections)... I'm feeling Ruthless. She was also pretending to be a Ruth. Zambreno didn't get to be Ruth, even in a photograph. Ruth is a billboard. Don't stop. Pretending. My baby is a centerfold!
P.s. What the fuck was with all the confusion over English slang like "loo" and "lift" and "jumper"? I don't remember not knowing that stuff and I'm also American. I don't believe that a girl who watches as many films as Ruth is supposed to have would ever be confused by those differences even the Harry Potter editors saw fit to leave in! Come on! I just don't believe you can watch this much and get NOTHING else. Dresses. Just watch the Oscars, girl. Awards seem to be your scene (or they are Zambreno's. Ruth isn't real).
August 3, 2012
Kate Durbin, might I have a word with you? Remember when you wrote a review for Kate Zambreno's book Green Girl and compared the heroine to Esther Greenwood of The Bell Jar?
Having the protagonist be on her own in a big city does not make this The Bell Jar, Part 2: Breakfast at Horrid's (Ruth's oh-so-sly name for her Famous British Department Store employer). Creating a character who does nothing but sleep late, try on clothes, and watch new wave films with her chatty, trashy roommate does not make this The Bell Jar, Part 2: Ariel in Furs. I'm tempted to take off that final star for the full-page FIN on the last page and for the carelessly wrapped scarf, artfully mussed gamine haircut, and defiant pout in the author photo.
Having the protagonist be on her own in a big city does not make this The Bell Jar, Part 2: Breakfast at Horrid's (Ruth's oh-so-sly name for her Famous British Department Store employer). Creating a character who does nothing but sleep late, try on clothes, and watch new wave films with her chatty, trashy roommate does not make this The Bell Jar, Part 2: Ariel in Furs. I'm tempted to take off that final star for the full-page FIN on the last page and for the carelessly wrapped scarf, artfully mussed gamine haircut, and defiant pout in the author photo.
March 13, 2012
Sometimes pretty girls are sad, but then they get their hair cut and they are less sad, but then later on they are sad, sad again. The End.
Read
April 17, 2013i wanted to like this. i've read several interviews with zambreno, and i'm sad to say that i like the way she talks about her writing more than i liked this book itself. she's clearly influenced by certain "new narrative" writers that i already admire (chris kraus and dodie bellamy come to mind), and she's attempting to stretch the boundaries of the bildungsroman to include more room for women's desires/emotions, as well as a larger intellectual scope and greater sense of formal adventure. all of which sounds great, but it doesn't quite come together for me.
as far as i can tell, green girl moves in three directions. at first, it seems like a fairly straightforward coming of age story. we meet ruth, an american in london who is unsure of what she wants from the world or what it wants from her. zambreno sketches a familiar millenial hipster type - obsessed with the fashions of the french new wave, bohemian but apolitical, entitled but broke, an oil and water mixture of drama and apathy. the boring, narrative-friendly part of me thinks this is the strongest aspect of the novel. at the least, it feels the most effortless. secondly, ruth is posited and contextualized in relation to some vaguely outsider-ish place in literature. green girl has been compared to clarice lispector's hour of the star (hell, that's part of the reason i read it), and there's an effort to align the character's inner state with lispector's uncanny knack for emptiness. but the parameters of the story are too familiar, and the devices of zambreno's prose are too obviously manipulative. finally, there's a kind of inter-textual "god's-eye-view" to the narrative - a writerly voice drops in from time to time, making ruth seem like an actress in a movie or a doll in a doll house. zambreno has the beginnings of some interesting ideas about how women's psyches and bodies are manipulated by this - both from the writer and reader's perspective - but they never quite elongate into something of real inquiry.
to make matters worse, the novel features a series of quotes from literature and theoretical sources that seem calculated to elevate the novel's more conventional observations. an example: ruth finishes a shift at the "horrids" department store (yes, this is a book with bad puns in it), and we're subsequently treated to an excerpt from walter benjamin's arcades project. the citations come from interesting sources (camera lucida, lispector, jean-luc godard), but they also read like an MFA program checklist and add little insight to the narrative itself.
that said, i'll probably still check out her next project, which sounds a bit more academic and theoretical. i want to read more books like this, i guess... i like the premise of zambreno's project thus far, i'm just not convinced by the follow-through at this point.
p.s. having read some of the negative reviews of this book on goodreads, can i add that my hesitations have *zero* to do with the focus on confused twentysomethings? i feel like there's a tendency among people my age (i'm 36) to dismiss things that happened to us a decade back as frivolous drama-queen stuff that we went through prior to buying homes or raising families or whatever. i think this is bullshit. real emotions happen all throughout life - i had them at age 8, and i'm sure i'll have them at age 78 if i make it that far. there's something disingenuous about the way we dismiss them in hindsight, especially when we hide behind the boring veneer of adulthood. for all my reservations about green girl, this is NOT a problem that this book has. in that regard, i wish there were more like it.
as far as i can tell, green girl moves in three directions. at first, it seems like a fairly straightforward coming of age story. we meet ruth, an american in london who is unsure of what she wants from the world or what it wants from her. zambreno sketches a familiar millenial hipster type - obsessed with the fashions of the french new wave, bohemian but apolitical, entitled but broke, an oil and water mixture of drama and apathy. the boring, narrative-friendly part of me thinks this is the strongest aspect of the novel. at the least, it feels the most effortless. secondly, ruth is posited and contextualized in relation to some vaguely outsider-ish place in literature. green girl has been compared to clarice lispector's hour of the star (hell, that's part of the reason i read it), and there's an effort to align the character's inner state with lispector's uncanny knack for emptiness. but the parameters of the story are too familiar, and the devices of zambreno's prose are too obviously manipulative. finally, there's a kind of inter-textual "god's-eye-view" to the narrative - a writerly voice drops in from time to time, making ruth seem like an actress in a movie or a doll in a doll house. zambreno has the beginnings of some interesting ideas about how women's psyches and bodies are manipulated by this - both from the writer and reader's perspective - but they never quite elongate into something of real inquiry.
to make matters worse, the novel features a series of quotes from literature and theoretical sources that seem calculated to elevate the novel's more conventional observations. an example: ruth finishes a shift at the "horrids" department store (yes, this is a book with bad puns in it), and we're subsequently treated to an excerpt from walter benjamin's arcades project. the citations come from interesting sources (camera lucida, lispector, jean-luc godard), but they also read like an MFA program checklist and add little insight to the narrative itself.
that said, i'll probably still check out her next project, which sounds a bit more academic and theoretical. i want to read more books like this, i guess... i like the premise of zambreno's project thus far, i'm just not convinced by the follow-through at this point.
p.s. having read some of the negative reviews of this book on goodreads, can i add that my hesitations have *zero* to do with the focus on confused twentysomethings? i feel like there's a tendency among people my age (i'm 36) to dismiss things that happened to us a decade back as frivolous drama-queen stuff that we went through prior to buying homes or raising families or whatever. i think this is bullshit. real emotions happen all throughout life - i had them at age 8, and i'm sure i'll have them at age 78 if i make it that far. there's something disingenuous about the way we dismiss them in hindsight, especially when we hide behind the boring veneer of adulthood. for all my reservations about green girl, this is NOT a problem that this book has. in that regard, i wish there were more like it.
February 20, 2012
I am far too old to fully appreciate this book.
January 6, 2015
look, i like "girls" and everything, but there's only so many stories about privileged, self-absorbed white girls whose daily agony is the fact that their lives are so boring and empty and all they want is to BE SOMEBODY without actually wanting to put in any effort to do anything to progress themselves that i can handle before rolling my eyes endlessly into my skull. i'm not saying that it's not worth doing a character study of a girl like this, and certainly there were parts to her totally tragic struggle that i once identified with. but ultimately, i am too far removed from this phase in my life to not want to push this character into some train tracks. i think the book had a handful of relatively insightful things to say about femininity and what it means to be a modern (privileged white) woman trying to make her mark on the world, but the way this was written just seemed so desperate for profundity that i found it a chore to make it through the 260-ish pages of story. EHHHHH.
October 9, 2015
This took me so long to finish and it was not really the books fault. It's just that the book hits home for me. It was a beautiful, character-driven read and I hope you go into it blind. Enjoy!
December 30, 2013
I loved this despite myself. Once I started it I was just really eager to read more and hated moments when I couldn't read it (y'kno work, watching charmed with my husband - the usual) and felt a little lost when it was over (even tho the ending is pretty abrupt and not wildly satisfying).
I was in the middle of this when we started re-watching the L Word, and the main character (Ruth) in the book reminded me a little of Jenny in season one.. if that helps any.
I had a couple of issues with this... the main one was the setting and the time period. For the first few chapters I thought that Green Girl was set in the 60s or 70s, mainly because Ruth kept referencing french new wave films, but also other stuff - like living in an all women b+b and the 'bad food' available in London. Eventually I worked it out that the book was set in the early 2000s, but all of this did nothing for setting a sense of time and place (which is important to me in novels!!) and in turn didn't add to any sense of reality.
And I feel I need to mention the narrator who I'm not overly sure about and don't know who it is either. Generally the narrator keeps out of the story, but now and again pops in (in a Lemony Snicket kind of way) to talk about her large breasts or something.
But really, there is a lot to relate to here - if you've ever worked in retail, been a girl in your 20s, had a bad relationship and all of that kind of stuff, you'll find it all here.
But the thing that hooks you is the writing, even if some bits are annoying the writing is so captivating and wonderful that you can kind of forgive the author anything, even if she uses the term 'mashed peas'.
I was in the middle of this when we started re-watching the L Word, and the main character (Ruth) in the book reminded me a little of Jenny in season one.. if that helps any.
I had a couple of issues with this... the main one was the setting and the time period. For the first few chapters I thought that Green Girl was set in the 60s or 70s, mainly because Ruth kept referencing french new wave films, but also other stuff - like living in an all women b+b and the 'bad food' available in London. Eventually I worked it out that the book was set in the early 2000s, but all of this did nothing for setting a sense of time and place (which is important to me in novels!!) and in turn didn't add to any sense of reality.
And I feel I need to mention the narrator who I'm not overly sure about and don't know who it is either. Generally the narrator keeps out of the story, but now and again pops in (in a Lemony Snicket kind of way) to talk about her large breasts or something.
But really, there is a lot to relate to here - if you've ever worked in retail, been a girl in your 20s, had a bad relationship and all of that kind of stuff, you'll find it all here.
But the thing that hooks you is the writing, even if some bits are annoying the writing is so captivating and wonderful that you can kind of forgive the author anything, even if she uses the term 'mashed peas'.
November 2, 2021
this was truly the woman-vs-the-void cerebral messy lost fucked up protagonist trying to navigate through girlhood lit fic of my dreams......loved the narration, loved the motif of being a voyeur in your own life, a perpetual and persistent imaginary eye/camera following you around, always tirelessly performing when you're a woman
November 6, 2012
This book should have been subtitled "Youth Is Wasted on the Young." The only reason I gave it two stars instead of one is because it did capture that blank slate quality of my early 20s when I was wandering around, waiting for my life to start. Oh, gosh, it's not just me, what a relief!
But, other than that, the best thing about this book was its generous use of white space.
For me, if an author is going to throw grammar and punctuation to the winds, they must be highly skilled or it's just annoying and hard to follow. I was annoyed a lot.
But, other than that, the best thing about this book was its generous use of white space.
For me, if an author is going to throw grammar and punctuation to the winds, they must be highly skilled or it's just annoying and hard to follow. I was annoyed a lot.
September 14, 2014
what the fuck was this
November 23, 2011
THIS REVIEW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT THE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN.
In Kate Zambreno’s hallucinatory and disjointed Green Girl (Emergency Press), we are lured into the world of Ruth, a young American girl lost and damaged in London. Following this ingénue into her dark musings, the echoes of voices fill the page—Ruth, HIM, her mother, the author, and the silver screen flickering in the distance. It is a hypnotic read—the duality of Ruth—her good side and her darkness, the need to behave and the need to be punished.
Scattered throughout this novel are several different voices. The first is a series of epigraphs—quotes from movies, the voices of directors and femme fatales, leading men and women, artists and philosophers, and the Bible as well. They form a narrative, not just a lead-in for each passage, but a thread that stretches across the book, defining our green girl, her emotions and desires, street signs to guide us through the cobblestones of London and the wrinkles of Ruth’s mottled brain:
“I have a part of you with me. You put your disease in me. It helps me. It makes me strong.”
—Isabella Rossellini in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet
And:
“First of all, I must make it clear that this girl does not know herself apart from the fact that she goes on living aimlessly. Were she foolish enough to ask ‘Who am I?’ she would fall flat on her face. For the question ‘Who am I?’ creates a need. And how does one satisfy that need? To probe oneself is to recognize that one is incomplete.”
—Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star
We are given these clues, these hints at what is really going on, where Ruth is in her emotional journey, what history she is standing on as she works at “Horrids” and goes to her parties, sleeps with men (and sometimes Agnes, her flat mate), and seeks some sort of depth and meaning in her life.
There is another chorus, a conversation that takes us back to the United States, to a past relationship, with an unnamed man who she only calls HIM or HE. As the story unfolds we come to realize that Ruth is unstable, damaged, hurt and lost. One passage that is repeated throughout, goes:
“There are strangers here who wear your face.”
It isn’t until much later in the novel that we get a more in-depth explanation of how HE hurt her, and what transpired between them:
“The first time we ever had sex you hurt me so badly that I was convinced my appendix had burst. You grabbed at me and shook me like a rag doll, throwing my legs over your shoulders, poking at my womb, my anus, my mouth. I had only known adoration before. Not this hate mixed with semen and want. I wrenched away from you like some hurt animal while you simmered in disgust, your penis dangling like a raw, red, piece of meat.”
Adding to the layers that push our green girl down are more voices. The third one is difficult to label. It seems to be the voice of her dead mother, haunting her, watching over her, guiding her, but also judging. And in other places, it feels as though it is the voice of our author, breaking the fourth wall and speaking to us as her creator, breathing life into this character. It’s up to the reader to decipher and come to their own conclusion, but take a look at these two passages. The first, is from the opening of the novel, and is about the birth of Ruth, which can be taken literally, as flesh born into this world, or as a metaphor for the author bringing this character to life:
“Ruth is still lovely as I see her. She is lovely perhaps in her impending decay, like a red rose whose petals are beginning to brown, her last gasp of girlhood. I want her to be young forever. My wonder child, wandering wild.
I am trying to push her out into the world.”
And then much later in the novel, this passage:
“I make my green girl kneel. I am the harsh director. She begs and pleads: Please don’t make me do it but there is a clause in her contract. I am reminded of the Barbie dolls that I played with as a young girl. I would perform the cruelest acts on my lovelies. I would behead them. I would cut off their hair to make them look like Ken. I would sentence their bodies to various torture machines. Perhaps writing for me is an extension of playing with those dolls. Ruth is my doll. I crave to give birth to her and to commit unspeakable acts of violence against her. I feel twinges of joy at her suffering.”
Part of the journey that is Green Girl involves navigating between these three different voices, these sections that break out of Ruth’s own narrative. It is a compelling way to structure a book, challenging at times, but once it seeps into you and festers, it expands to engulf you, absorbing you into the wet, dreary London streets, almost claustrophobic at times.
But above and beyond all of this is Ruth. She is a complicated protagonist, one that we want to root for, because she is hurt, because she needs help, even if she doesn’t want to admit it to herself. She is constantly split between wanting attention, and abhorring it:
“Look at me
(don’t look at me)
Look at me
(don’t look at me)
Look at me don’t look at me look at me look at me don’t look at me don’t look
(Look)
(Don’t look)
I can’t stand it if you don’t look
Look
Look
Please
Stop”
We understand. There is a constant shadow hanging over Ruth, a sense of demise, and as she further abuses herself, there is a voyeuristic pleasure in watching her come undone. And yet, how far will it go? This darkness permeates the novel, always an echo, always adding an element of danger to the page:
“Train about to depart. Mind the gap. The doors shut like a silencer. Shooosssh. Crowded car. Bodies, bodies, bodies. Ruth remains standing, gripping the metal pole to steady herself. Maybe it’ll miss the tracks next time, she thinks. She imagines her face smashed, unrecognizable. Gone in pieces like a porcelain doll.”
And:
“She gulps down a cup of tea. The wet teabag in the sink lies there like a dead mouse.”
Ruth gets pleasure from her own self-destruction. She is both narcissistic and desperate for love. When she masturbates, the first face that comes into focus is her own. She fantasizes about a beast destroying her, and when she finally gets a sweet young man, Rhys, to have sex with her, she immediately loses interest. And yet, when the bartender in a corner pub takes her downstairs and has his way with her in a storeroom, she disconnects, and pushes out of her body, performing “her magic trick of going dead inside.”
What does Ruth want? How can she be satisfied? How can we help her? It is not clear. She needs closure, a way to get away from HIM, or she will continue to seek out men that abuse her, and find no fulfillment in the kind boys that are drawn to her. She is destined for a tragic death, and it is something that she wants, or thinks she does. It is only in the final sentences of this novel that we see that maybe she can be saved, maybe there is hope, if she can just let it all go, move on with her life, forgive herself for everything she has done, and be born anew:
“I want to go to a church she thinks. I want to sit in a church and let the white light bathe me. It doesn’t matter what church, what religion. It would be best if I did not understand the mumbling pleas directed up high. I want to go to a church and direct my eyes up high and open my arms open my arms up to the ceiling. And scream. And scream. And scream.”
Kate Zambreno has written a powerful, hypnotic, and lyrical book, with Green Girl. There have been comparisons to Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, and I think that is a good place to start, but somewhere in here there is also the violence and danger of the misanthropic American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, and the work of Mary Gaitskill, as well. It is not just a cautionary tale, but also the baring of a soul—in all of her complex, damaged and vulnerable glory. Ruth will stay with you long after the book is closed, her shadow drifting down the streets of London, eyes wide, seeking something—forgiveness or acceptance, perhaps.
In Kate Zambreno’s hallucinatory and disjointed Green Girl (Emergency Press), we are lured into the world of Ruth, a young American girl lost and damaged in London. Following this ingénue into her dark musings, the echoes of voices fill the page—Ruth, HIM, her mother, the author, and the silver screen flickering in the distance. It is a hypnotic read—the duality of Ruth—her good side and her darkness, the need to behave and the need to be punished.
Scattered throughout this novel are several different voices. The first is a series of epigraphs—quotes from movies, the voices of directors and femme fatales, leading men and women, artists and philosophers, and the Bible as well. They form a narrative, not just a lead-in for each passage, but a thread that stretches across the book, defining our green girl, her emotions and desires, street signs to guide us through the cobblestones of London and the wrinkles of Ruth’s mottled brain:
“I have a part of you with me. You put your disease in me. It helps me. It makes me strong.”
—Isabella Rossellini in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet
And:
“First of all, I must make it clear that this girl does not know herself apart from the fact that she goes on living aimlessly. Were she foolish enough to ask ‘Who am I?’ she would fall flat on her face. For the question ‘Who am I?’ creates a need. And how does one satisfy that need? To probe oneself is to recognize that one is incomplete.”
—Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star
We are given these clues, these hints at what is really going on, where Ruth is in her emotional journey, what history she is standing on as she works at “Horrids” and goes to her parties, sleeps with men (and sometimes Agnes, her flat mate), and seeks some sort of depth and meaning in her life.
There is another chorus, a conversation that takes us back to the United States, to a past relationship, with an unnamed man who she only calls HIM or HE. As the story unfolds we come to realize that Ruth is unstable, damaged, hurt and lost. One passage that is repeated throughout, goes:
“There are strangers here who wear your face.”
It isn’t until much later in the novel that we get a more in-depth explanation of how HE hurt her, and what transpired between them:
“The first time we ever had sex you hurt me so badly that I was convinced my appendix had burst. You grabbed at me and shook me like a rag doll, throwing my legs over your shoulders, poking at my womb, my anus, my mouth. I had only known adoration before. Not this hate mixed with semen and want. I wrenched away from you like some hurt animal while you simmered in disgust, your penis dangling like a raw, red, piece of meat.”
Adding to the layers that push our green girl down are more voices. The third one is difficult to label. It seems to be the voice of her dead mother, haunting her, watching over her, guiding her, but also judging. And in other places, it feels as though it is the voice of our author, breaking the fourth wall and speaking to us as her creator, breathing life into this character. It’s up to the reader to decipher and come to their own conclusion, but take a look at these two passages. The first, is from the opening of the novel, and is about the birth of Ruth, which can be taken literally, as flesh born into this world, or as a metaphor for the author bringing this character to life:
“Ruth is still lovely as I see her. She is lovely perhaps in her impending decay, like a red rose whose petals are beginning to brown, her last gasp of girlhood. I want her to be young forever. My wonder child, wandering wild.
I am trying to push her out into the world.”
And then much later in the novel, this passage:
“I make my green girl kneel. I am the harsh director. She begs and pleads: Please don’t make me do it but there is a clause in her contract. I am reminded of the Barbie dolls that I played with as a young girl. I would perform the cruelest acts on my lovelies. I would behead them. I would cut off their hair to make them look like Ken. I would sentence their bodies to various torture machines. Perhaps writing for me is an extension of playing with those dolls. Ruth is my doll. I crave to give birth to her and to commit unspeakable acts of violence against her. I feel twinges of joy at her suffering.”
Part of the journey that is Green Girl involves navigating between these three different voices, these sections that break out of Ruth’s own narrative. It is a compelling way to structure a book, challenging at times, but once it seeps into you and festers, it expands to engulf you, absorbing you into the wet, dreary London streets, almost claustrophobic at times.
But above and beyond all of this is Ruth. She is a complicated protagonist, one that we want to root for, because she is hurt, because she needs help, even if she doesn’t want to admit it to herself. She is constantly split between wanting attention, and abhorring it:
“Look at me
(don’t look at me)
Look at me
(don’t look at me)
Look at me don’t look at me look at me look at me don’t look at me don’t look
(Look)
(Don’t look)
I can’t stand it if you don’t look
Look
Look
Please
Stop”
We understand. There is a constant shadow hanging over Ruth, a sense of demise, and as she further abuses herself, there is a voyeuristic pleasure in watching her come undone. And yet, how far will it go? This darkness permeates the novel, always an echo, always adding an element of danger to the page:
“Train about to depart. Mind the gap. The doors shut like a silencer. Shooosssh. Crowded car. Bodies, bodies, bodies. Ruth remains standing, gripping the metal pole to steady herself. Maybe it’ll miss the tracks next time, she thinks. She imagines her face smashed, unrecognizable. Gone in pieces like a porcelain doll.”
And:
“She gulps down a cup of tea. The wet teabag in the sink lies there like a dead mouse.”
Ruth gets pleasure from her own self-destruction. She is both narcissistic and desperate for love. When she masturbates, the first face that comes into focus is her own. She fantasizes about a beast destroying her, and when she finally gets a sweet young man, Rhys, to have sex with her, she immediately loses interest. And yet, when the bartender in a corner pub takes her downstairs and has his way with her in a storeroom, she disconnects, and pushes out of her body, performing “her magic trick of going dead inside.”
What does Ruth want? How can she be satisfied? How can we help her? It is not clear. She needs closure, a way to get away from HIM, or she will continue to seek out men that abuse her, and find no fulfillment in the kind boys that are drawn to her. She is destined for a tragic death, and it is something that she wants, or thinks she does. It is only in the final sentences of this novel that we see that maybe she can be saved, maybe there is hope, if she can just let it all go, move on with her life, forgive herself for everything she has done, and be born anew:
“I want to go to a church she thinks. I want to sit in a church and let the white light bathe me. It doesn’t matter what church, what religion. It would be best if I did not understand the mumbling pleas directed up high. I want to go to a church and direct my eyes up high and open my arms open my arms up to the ceiling. And scream. And scream. And scream.”
Kate Zambreno has written a powerful, hypnotic, and lyrical book, with Green Girl. There have been comparisons to Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, and I think that is a good place to start, but somewhere in here there is also the violence and danger of the misanthropic American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, and the work of Mary Gaitskill, as well. It is not just a cautionary tale, but also the baring of a soul—in all of her complex, damaged and vulnerable glory. Ruth will stay with you long after the book is closed, her shadow drifting down the streets of London, eyes wide, seeking something—forgiveness or acceptance, perhaps.
January 17, 2018
I read this novel in the last month of 2017 for two reasons. One is that it had sat, all that year, in a pile of unread books I own; a pile named in my mind Books I Want To Read Soon. The other reason is that in my memoir I am working through my teen years. Oh, what a murky area that is in my mind. Reading novels about teenage girls in the current century helps me recapture those times of confusion, urgency and uncertainty in my own life.
Ruth is a girl on the cusp of womanhood, right about where I was in my college years. She is an American who escaped the downward swirl of her first romantic heartbreak by moving to London. She works as a shop girl in "Horrids," as she calls that famous department store. Her job is to offer samples of a perfume called Desire, a marketing device for an American teenage pop star. She has not resurfaced from the downward swirl but she is trying.
Ruth is beautiful, slender, with long blonde hair. She roams the city feeling the eyes upon her, wondering who she really is. She parties, acts out, makes consecutive bad choices. If you were her mother you would be horrified, anxious, protective, maybe controlling. I am not her mother. I was her in Ann Arbor, MI, pretending to be a college student, partying, trying out different versions of myself, making consecutive bad decisions, some of which I still suffer from today.
The writing is evocative and disjointed. The tone is existential. The images are photographic, like stills from a movie. I felt many emotions, all at war with each other, as I read.
I recalled writers I have read like Clarice Lispector, Sylvia Plath, Lidia Yuknavitch, and many more. Women who explore and express the tangled, grasping, hesitant poetics of desire while creating a self no one in the modern world can give them because she has not existed before.
I am glad I read it.
Ruth is a girl on the cusp of womanhood, right about where I was in my college years. She is an American who escaped the downward swirl of her first romantic heartbreak by moving to London. She works as a shop girl in "Horrids," as she calls that famous department store. Her job is to offer samples of a perfume called Desire, a marketing device for an American teenage pop star. She has not resurfaced from the downward swirl but she is trying.
Ruth is beautiful, slender, with long blonde hair. She roams the city feeling the eyes upon her, wondering who she really is. She parties, acts out, makes consecutive bad choices. If you were her mother you would be horrified, anxious, protective, maybe controlling. I am not her mother. I was her in Ann Arbor, MI, pretending to be a college student, partying, trying out different versions of myself, making consecutive bad decisions, some of which I still suffer from today.
The writing is evocative and disjointed. The tone is existential. The images are photographic, like stills from a movie. I felt many emotions, all at war with each other, as I read.
I recalled writers I have read like Clarice Lispector, Sylvia Plath, Lidia Yuknavitch, and many more. Women who explore and express the tangled, grasping, hesitant poetics of desire while creating a self no one in the modern world can give them because she has not existed before.
I am glad I read it.
February 15, 2012
This was just blah to me and very strange, and I guess, unique. The book opens with a quotation from the Book of Ruth, and the green girl protagonist is named Ruth, so I think the author gives birth in the first paragraphs of this book. ("the pull, the blood, the cry...the agony of becoming...now I must name her. Ruth...") I'm not sure I understood it completely, but I think the author was the first person "I" frequently observing Ruth, her creation, who never fully "becomes," even at the end of the book. Scene after scene illustrates the same thing- that Ruth as an "object," without any depth or beliefs of her own (and not really struggling to find depth or meaning either). One older man Ruth dates, an author, says that she "drowns herself in her own reflections." He too, uses her as an object to be studied-- for his writing. I enjoyed the quotes that were sprinkled throughout, but again thought they didn't add any new meaning... but I guess lack of meaning is part of the point of this book... which might be why I didn't find it very satisfying at all.
I think this is the weakest of the tournament of books books, not on par with the others that I've read so far.
I think this is the weakest of the tournament of books books, not on par with the others that I've read so far.
July 3, 2015
The thing about self-indulgence is that it needs to be watered down by something else or you will devolve into full on self-pity gluttony.
Green Girl offers some really good perspectives on the Narcissism and exhibitionism of this generation, but not quite fleshed out in a way that's easy to swallow. I understood the main character, she's that wasted girl at the party that everyone looks after even though it's just not cute anymore, but in attempts to give her hidden depth, I found her intolerable. She is the most inactive protagonist ever. She lies back and takes violation, cruelty, and sexual assault, but as long as her eyeliner wings are flawless she doesn't care. She has no virtues other than she clearly doesn't give a fuck. Not in a jaded way, but in a Zoloft kind of way. The sorry was too "woe is me" white girl. I didn't feel any pain for the character, just an ache like period cramps. It's very distinctly feminine but I'm conflicted. Sometimes I value this books honesty. Sometimes I think the narrator is an insipid twat. But it's a book for the Girls (Lena Dunham, not Powerpuff) generation, love it or hate it I wish more people read it to generate some discussion.
Green Girl offers some really good perspectives on the Narcissism and exhibitionism of this generation, but not quite fleshed out in a way that's easy to swallow. I understood the main character, she's that wasted girl at the party that everyone looks after even though it's just not cute anymore, but in attempts to give her hidden depth, I found her intolerable. She is the most inactive protagonist ever. She lies back and takes violation, cruelty, and sexual assault, but as long as her eyeliner wings are flawless she doesn't care. She has no virtues other than she clearly doesn't give a fuck. Not in a jaded way, but in a Zoloft kind of way. The sorry was too "woe is me" white girl. I didn't feel any pain for the character, just an ache like period cramps. It's very distinctly feminine but I'm conflicted. Sometimes I value this books honesty. Sometimes I think the narrator is an insipid twat. But it's a book for the Girls (Lena Dunham, not Powerpuff) generation, love it or hate it I wish more people read it to generate some discussion.
November 16, 2011
Kate Zambreno's Green Girl is a startling attempt to reach the interior of the girl. The girl wants to be fancy. No, she wants to be annihilated.
An anxious and confused narrator, reminiscent of Carole Maso's Vanessa, negotiates the city, haunted by the memory of a brutal lover. (is that language too dramatic?) Ruth lives in London, in a hostel of girls. Ruth is a shopgirl. She feels alienated. She talks about her digestive distress.
This is the kind of book that acts, subtly but pervasively, on your nervous system. Maybe you feel creepy, like you're watching teenage girls take off their clothes on tumblr. Maybe you feel frustrated because Ruth doesn't know what she wants. Maybe you are very, very frustrated and want to tell Ruth how to make good choices. TOO BAD. IT'S A BOOK NOT YOUR OWN REAL LIFE. not even your own best friend's life. Maybe it just makes you sad because being a girl is hard.
I lent my copy out, so I can't quote from it. Let it be known, though, that Kate Zambreno is one of the writers I am most excited about.
An anxious and confused narrator, reminiscent of Carole Maso's Vanessa, negotiates the city, haunted by the memory of a brutal lover. (is that language too dramatic?) Ruth lives in London, in a hostel of girls. Ruth is a shopgirl. She feels alienated. She talks about her digestive distress.
This is the kind of book that acts, subtly but pervasively, on your nervous system. Maybe you feel creepy, like you're watching teenage girls take off their clothes on tumblr. Maybe you feel frustrated because Ruth doesn't know what she wants. Maybe you are very, very frustrated and want to tell Ruth how to make good choices. TOO BAD. IT'S A BOOK NOT YOUR OWN REAL LIFE. not even your own best friend's life. Maybe it just makes you sad because being a girl is hard.
I lent my copy out, so I can't quote from it. Let it be known, though, that Kate Zambreno is one of the writers I am most excited about.
March 30, 2023
so true kate! unrelated but i’m having a nervous breakdown
February 1, 2015
‘ - I like it when a film messes with my mind a little bit’, sade jag till en fellow cineast igår.
‘- You mean like 'Inception'?’
Bättre ordval – damn that esprit de l’escalier - hade nog varit ”stirs my mind”. Samma gäller för litteratur och andra former av kulturkonsumtion. Menar mer att ett verk berör genom att väcka associationer eller slumrande tankar. Gestaltar något jag tänkt eller känt, utan att ha kunnat verbalisera eller se en helhet. Med det sagt lever jag på samma gång enligt Lex Bodil (Malmsten); att jag alltid egentligen läser för att komma ut ur mig själv, inte för att känna igen mig. Is there no way out of the mind, undrade också Plath.
Brukar alltid ha tydliga minnen av varifrån olika boktips inkommit, och jag vet att jag sett något om Zambreno nyligen, men var? Om det är någon jag känner, träd fram – och stort tack! Ett vagt minne dock av att en ung, italiensk bokälskare instagrammat ett citat ur 'Green Girl'. Ett citat som fick mig att inse att den är SÅ rakt upp min strada.
'Green Girl' är experimentell. Läses med fördel på natten. En Londonroman och en Bildungsroman full av intertext. Har inte sett så många samlade kultur(p)referenser, som direkt talar till just mig, sedan Mikael Fants 'Grundläggande genetik'. En annan svensk författare jag tänker på är Therese Bohman med 'Den andra kvinnan' och hennes undran varför det inte finns några kvinnliga flanörer, men även Ofeliavibbarna från omslaget till första romanen.
Esther Greenwood goes London. Deeply morbid, deeply morbid... Stevie Smiths unga, uppdiktade Londonkvinna känns nära romanens Ruth. Ruth, som den oförglömliga Ruth i John Irvings 'A Widow for One Year'. Ateisten doesn’t do bibliska referenser, så den Ruth hoppar jag över och associerar vidare till Pomme i den franska romanen 'Spetsknypplerskan', 'La dentellière'. Utöver flâneur sköljer fler franska begrepp - jouissance, dépaysement, dérive – över mig under läsningen.
Det tog mig ett femtiotal sidor att få så starka känslor för den här romanen. Inflyttade 22-åriga butiksbiträden ansatta av postgymnasial Angst? Klippa håret kort-klyschan? Själlöst sex-stereotypen? Toxic friend-tropen? Hysa ett inre mörker och gå och stirra ner på ett järnvägsspår, det gjorde redan Betty Blue. Bära basker och ”a cheap Boots umbrella”, gå in på Odeon i jakt på eftermiddagsrulle? Komma hem till en shitty houseshare med tomt kylskåp? Detta är både långt borta, en hel effin' generation nu, och samtidigt dagligen närvarande i Londonlivet.
Ett annat problem är att jag alltid undrar om unga människor med denna nivå av kultur verkligen existerar? De gestaltas alltid av äldre författare. I över ett decennium har jag umgåtts med 90-talister varje dag och möjligen kan någon uppskatta Holly Golightly, men mycket sällan har någon hört talas om Nouvelle Vague-filmer eller intresserar sig för Bergman. Lite smärtsamt, men så är det.
Låt mig presentera en checklista, för att se om 'Green Girl' är för dig:
Utmärkande ordval i prosan:
reverie, identity crisis, melancholy, set adrift, free, loneliness.
Citat:
"She sits in her usual spot by the window at Foyles Café."
“A bittersweet sense of transience hits her like a spell. […] She would leave and leave and leave. And they would stay.” (Ruth byter jobb. Igen.)
“And then afterwards, all day, she takes with her a tiny flame of something, what it is, she does not know. “ (Ruth, efter att ha träffat en ny person hon känner sig dragen till)
Symboler:
Speglar, blickar, kameraögat, gatan, rummet.
Musik:
Nico, The Smiths
Konst, teater, mytologi:
Dalí, Bacon, Degas, Millais, commedia dell’arte, Danaiderna
Littreferenser:
Baudelaire, Sartre, Isherwood, Woolf, Lispector, Keats, Shelley, Colette, Weil, Lacan, Rhys, Durkheim, Shakespeare, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Filmreferenser:
Bonjour Tristesse, Tatis Playtime, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Wizard of Oz, Jane Fonda i Klute, Varda, Godard, Repulsion, Persona, Blue Velvet, The Night Porter, The Big Sleep, Blanche Dubois i A Streetcar Named Desire, Julie Christie i Darling, Ingrid Bergman i Gasljus.
Stilikoner: Monica Vitti, Jackie O, Anouk Aimée, Mia Farrow, Edie Sedgwick.
GE MIG MER ZAMBRENO!!!
‘- You mean like 'Inception'?’
Bättre ordval – damn that esprit de l’escalier - hade nog varit ”stirs my mind”. Samma gäller för litteratur och andra former av kulturkonsumtion. Menar mer att ett verk berör genom att väcka associationer eller slumrande tankar. Gestaltar något jag tänkt eller känt, utan att ha kunnat verbalisera eller se en helhet. Med det sagt lever jag på samma gång enligt Lex Bodil (Malmsten); att jag alltid egentligen läser för att komma ut ur mig själv, inte för att känna igen mig. Is there no way out of the mind, undrade också Plath.
Brukar alltid ha tydliga minnen av varifrån olika boktips inkommit, och jag vet att jag sett något om Zambreno nyligen, men var? Om det är någon jag känner, träd fram – och stort tack! Ett vagt minne dock av att en ung, italiensk bokälskare instagrammat ett citat ur 'Green Girl'. Ett citat som fick mig att inse att den är SÅ rakt upp min strada.
'Green Girl' är experimentell. Läses med fördel på natten. En Londonroman och en Bildungsroman full av intertext. Har inte sett så många samlade kultur(p)referenser, som direkt talar till just mig, sedan Mikael Fants 'Grundläggande genetik'. En annan svensk författare jag tänker på är Therese Bohman med 'Den andra kvinnan' och hennes undran varför det inte finns några kvinnliga flanörer, men även Ofeliavibbarna från omslaget till första romanen.
Esther Greenwood goes London. Deeply morbid, deeply morbid... Stevie Smiths unga, uppdiktade Londonkvinna känns nära romanens Ruth. Ruth, som den oförglömliga Ruth i John Irvings 'A Widow for One Year'. Ateisten doesn’t do bibliska referenser, så den Ruth hoppar jag över och associerar vidare till Pomme i den franska romanen 'Spetsknypplerskan', 'La dentellière'. Utöver flâneur sköljer fler franska begrepp - jouissance, dépaysement, dérive – över mig under läsningen.
Det tog mig ett femtiotal sidor att få så starka känslor för den här romanen. Inflyttade 22-åriga butiksbiträden ansatta av postgymnasial Angst? Klippa håret kort-klyschan? Själlöst sex-stereotypen? Toxic friend-tropen? Hysa ett inre mörker och gå och stirra ner på ett järnvägsspår, det gjorde redan Betty Blue. Bära basker och ”a cheap Boots umbrella”, gå in på Odeon i jakt på eftermiddagsrulle? Komma hem till en shitty houseshare med tomt kylskåp? Detta är både långt borta, en hel effin' generation nu, och samtidigt dagligen närvarande i Londonlivet.
Ett annat problem är att jag alltid undrar om unga människor med denna nivå av kultur verkligen existerar? De gestaltas alltid av äldre författare. I över ett decennium har jag umgåtts med 90-talister varje dag och möjligen kan någon uppskatta Holly Golightly, men mycket sällan har någon hört talas om Nouvelle Vague-filmer eller intresserar sig för Bergman. Lite smärtsamt, men så är det.
Låt mig presentera en checklista, för att se om 'Green Girl' är för dig:
Utmärkande ordval i prosan:
reverie, identity crisis, melancholy, set adrift, free, loneliness.
Citat:
"She sits in her usual spot by the window at Foyles Café."
“A bittersweet sense of transience hits her like a spell. […] She would leave and leave and leave. And they would stay.” (Ruth byter jobb. Igen.)
“And then afterwards, all day, she takes with her a tiny flame of something, what it is, she does not know. “ (Ruth, efter att ha träffat en ny person hon känner sig dragen till)
Symboler:
Speglar, blickar, kameraögat, gatan, rummet.
Musik:
Nico, The Smiths
Konst, teater, mytologi:
Dalí, Bacon, Degas, Millais, commedia dell’arte, Danaiderna
Littreferenser:
Baudelaire, Sartre, Isherwood, Woolf, Lispector, Keats, Shelley, Colette, Weil, Lacan, Rhys, Durkheim, Shakespeare, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Filmreferenser:
Bonjour Tristesse, Tatis Playtime, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Wizard of Oz, Jane Fonda i Klute, Varda, Godard, Repulsion, Persona, Blue Velvet, The Night Porter, The Big Sleep, Blanche Dubois i A Streetcar Named Desire, Julie Christie i Darling, Ingrid Bergman i Gasljus.
Stilikoner: Monica Vitti, Jackie O, Anouk Aimée, Mia Farrow, Edie Sedgwick.
GE MIG MER ZAMBRENO!!!
July 19, 2022
This is not a book for everyone, but it was the perfect book for me.
One common complaint will be that "nothing happens." Green Girl is not plot-driven, as most novels are. Instead its voice--searing and immediate--that propels the reader forward. I like books like this, and again, this book is very much in the tradition of female modernists (unsurprising given Zambreno's other book, Heroines). Reminiscent of fractured novels like those by Jean Rhys and Didion's Play It as It Lays, Ruth is an infuriating but magnetic main character, trailed by a mysterious narrator observing Ruth and the other green girls and boys in her orbit.
Image obsessed but revolted by beauty standards. A ravenous consumer aware she is being exploited (for she works, throughout the book, in retail). She fills the void with clothes and men, but describes going dead and losing interest as soon as they touch her. We learn little of her life in Chicago, but there is the unaddressed trauma of her mother's death (seldom mentioned) and a horrible breakup haunting Ruth in London. More worried about appearing interesting/appealing to others than actually having interesting experiences, I cringed through this whole book--in the best way possible. As someone who spent my twenties reblogging French New Wave screepcaps on Tumblr and wore crinolines under my vintage reproduction dresses to the dive bar, I felt seen in an uncomfortable way. The good thing, I think is, that Zambreno nails that this is such a specifically early-twenties way of living that most of us eventually outgrow (unless you're Agnes whose fate seems to be becoming a call girl).
I should note that I read the original version, and I have a hard time imagining why the author revised this book and what was changed. There were a few small typos in the original (I'm a copyeditor, which is the only reason I noticed), but it sounded like large-scale content changes. Just interesting!
One common complaint will be that "nothing happens." Green Girl is not plot-driven, as most novels are. Instead its voice--searing and immediate--that propels the reader forward. I like books like this, and again, this book is very much in the tradition of female modernists (unsurprising given Zambreno's other book, Heroines). Reminiscent of fractured novels like those by Jean Rhys and Didion's Play It as It Lays, Ruth is an infuriating but magnetic main character, trailed by a mysterious narrator observing Ruth and the other green girls and boys in her orbit.
Image obsessed but revolted by beauty standards. A ravenous consumer aware she is being exploited (for she works, throughout the book, in retail). She fills the void with clothes and men, but describes going dead and losing interest as soon as they touch her. We learn little of her life in Chicago, but there is the unaddressed trauma of her mother's death (seldom mentioned) and a horrible breakup haunting Ruth in London. More worried about appearing interesting/appealing to others than actually having interesting experiences, I cringed through this whole book--in the best way possible. As someone who spent my twenties reblogging French New Wave screepcaps on Tumblr and wore crinolines under my vintage reproduction dresses to the dive bar, I felt seen in an uncomfortable way. The good thing, I think is, that Zambreno nails that this is such a specifically early-twenties way of living that most of us eventually outgrow (unless you're Agnes whose fate seems to be becoming a call girl).
I should note that I read the original version, and I have a hard time imagining why the author revised this book and what was changed. There were a few small typos in the original (I'm a copyeditor, which is the only reason I noticed), but it sounded like large-scale content changes. Just interesting!
October 21, 2021
This book was a hard one to rate. I both loved it and was disappointed in it. All at the same time. It felt honest and raw and I loved that the protagonist was very flawed but at one hand she was very much pittying herself. Which is very easy to do, I know. But very rarely leads anywhere good. I both saw moments that reminded of myself but I also wanted to scream at her in other moments.
Read
March 31, 2022Someone once asked me what my love language was, and I said “borderline personality disorder.”
Should it surprise you I liked Green Girl?
Zambreno's titular character is an amalgam of most of my exes, wandering around London being very earnest and reasonably bright and very noncommittal, and not that great of a person, surrounded by even worse people. The actual circumstances are nowhere near as interesting as the breathy style. People call it self-indulgent but fuck that shit – if these people were alive in the 1920s, they would have dismissed Virginia Woolf as a self-indulgent hipster, and well, they would have been kind of right, but they would have missed the point entirely.
Should it surprise you I liked Green Girl?
Zambreno's titular character is an amalgam of most of my exes, wandering around London being very earnest and reasonably bright and very noncommittal, and not that great of a person, surrounded by even worse people. The actual circumstances are nowhere near as interesting as the breathy style. People call it self-indulgent but fuck that shit – if these people were alive in the 1920s, they would have dismissed Virginia Woolf as a self-indulgent hipster, and well, they would have been kind of right, but they would have missed the point entirely.
October 25, 2017
3+
En väldigt annorlunda bok, inte lik något annat jag läst, samtidigt som den är fullproppad med intertextualitet och väldigt lik Glaskupan. Ibland är den lite tråkig, ibland är den väldigt intressant.
Målgruppen är väldigt specifik: exakt min ålder. Jag känner ingen mig i mycket, skildringarna av kvinnan är pricksäkra och det feministiska är så, jag vet inte, subtilt och härligt. Jag känner ett behov att prata om den!!
Jag vet inte om det är översättningen som är dålig eller om kommateringen bara är konstig (och layouten, styckeindelningen, radavstånden). Ändock: jag gillar språket och jag har markerat flera fina formuleringar.
Okej så ungefär lika konstig och ostrukturerad som denna recension, är också Green Girl. Här kommer några fina citat:
”Ibland berättar hon om sina handlingar inuti huvudet i tredje person. Gör det henne till författare eller kvinna?”
”Du skapar mig och sedan förstör du mig och förväntar dig att jag ska plocka upp bitarna igen och leva. Som om jag aldrig hade träffat dig. Det är så enkelt för dig. Du är redan död inuti.”
”En man står bakom Ruth hela vägen hem. Han trycker sig mot henne. Vi är tillsammans under resan tänker hon. Jag tillåter honom att trycka sig mot mig, för att lämna plats. Det är nästan egendomligt rörande.”
En väldigt annorlunda bok, inte lik något annat jag läst, samtidigt som den är fullproppad med intertextualitet och väldigt lik Glaskupan. Ibland är den lite tråkig, ibland är den väldigt intressant.
Målgruppen är väldigt specifik: exakt min ålder. Jag känner ingen mig i mycket, skildringarna av kvinnan är pricksäkra och det feministiska är så, jag vet inte, subtilt och härligt. Jag känner ett behov att prata om den!!
Jag vet inte om det är översättningen som är dålig eller om kommateringen bara är konstig (och layouten, styckeindelningen, radavstånden). Ändock: jag gillar språket och jag har markerat flera fina formuleringar.
Okej så ungefär lika konstig och ostrukturerad som denna recension, är också Green Girl. Här kommer några fina citat:
”Ibland berättar hon om sina handlingar inuti huvudet i tredje person. Gör det henne till författare eller kvinna?”
”Du skapar mig och sedan förstör du mig och förväntar dig att jag ska plocka upp bitarna igen och leva. Som om jag aldrig hade träffat dig. Det är så enkelt för dig. Du är redan död inuti.”
”En man står bakom Ruth hela vägen hem. Han trycker sig mot henne. Vi är tillsammans under resan tänker hon. Jag tillåter honom att trycka sig mot mig, för att lämna plats. Det är nästan egendomligt rörande.”
May 18, 2019
A devasting prose-poem on the lack of identity that can infect one's early 20s. I loved it. Worth reading for the narrative voice alone. Also, I should mention that I had no intention of actually reading this book when I did. But glancing at the first few pages sucked me right in and then I couldn't stop. This is not a book to read for plot; it has little. But it captures and evokes an experience perfectly. As a reader in my 40s, this is a book to savor, remembering what it was like to be so unformed, and to make me damned glad I'm not 20 anymore. I could go on about other terrific qualitities of the book and the way it reflects our current society, etc., but really, you'd be better off reading it yourself (it's short) and forming your own opinion. Highly recommended. If I had to make a trite movie pitch for the book, I'd say think of it as Bridget Jones's Diary for pessimists or Catcher in the Rye for the Jersey Shore generation, a story wherein our heroine is inarticulate and essentially vapid, but entrancing, troubling and moving nonetheless.
January 9, 2018
Gadi mi se što raspoznajem svaku aluziju. Gadi mi se što znam svaki tračak književnih puteva koji su ovdje provučeni. Rastužuje me što se moje znanje o svecima ovdje moralo uprljati u izlučevine nečijih nakaznih tumačenja.
Često je "niža" književnost kao poljsko cvijeće. Nije raskošno, ali je lijepo i dotiče čovjeka. "Visoka" književnost je poput veličanstvenih crkava, punih dostojanstvenosti i ljepote. Poljsko cvijeće možeš donijeti u crkvu i jedno i drugo će biti lijepo, nekako se nadopuniti.
A onda neki u "nisku" kulturu umetnu i smeće. Smeće bace u poljane i ono se gnjili na vrućini i truje cvijet. Neki smeće ubace u crkve, nagrđujući svetost toga mjesta. A neki ugledaju poljski cvijetak u crkvi i odluče da i smeće tu pripada. Ova knjiga je to smeće.
Često je "niža" književnost kao poljsko cvijeće. Nije raskošno, ali je lijepo i dotiče čovjeka. "Visoka" književnost je poput veličanstvenih crkava, punih dostojanstvenosti i ljepote. Poljsko cvijeće možeš donijeti u crkvu i jedno i drugo će biti lijepo, nekako se nadopuniti.
A onda neki u "nisku" kulturu umetnu i smeće. Smeće bace u poljane i ono se gnjili na vrućini i truje cvijet. Neki smeće ubace u crkve, nagrđujući svetost toga mjesta. A neki ugledaju poljski cvijetak u crkvi i odluče da i smeće tu pripada. Ova knjiga je to smeće.
May 12, 2023
“A woman must continually watch herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping.” - John Berger
“I make my green girl kneel. I am the harsh director. She begs and pleads: Please don’t make me do it but there is a clause in her contract. I am reminded of the barbie dolls that I played with as a young girl. I would perform the cruelest acts on my lovelies. I would behead them. I would cut off their hair to make them look like Ken. I would sentence their bodies to various torture machines. Perhaps writing for me is an extension of playing with those dolls. Ruth is my doll. I crave to give birth to her and to commit unspeakable acts of violence against her. I feel twinges of joy at her suffering” (Green Girl, 162).
kate zambreno crafts a spectacular narrative study of what she coins the “green girl.” the green girl is the young-girl in the urban sprawl on the verge of becoming an adult. she is prodded at, projected on, leered at, rendered object, gazed at. she’s looked at by the tourists at the department store she works at, by the male writers who pin their aspirations on her, by herself in her own reflection in store windows, and by its tenderly vicious narrator, a woman-creator who traces her green girl, named ruth, from the banal to disturbing.
zambreno crafts a language of the young-girl that is deeply visual and drawing from the practices of film and the flâneur archive. scenes cut from one to another. in the backdrop of a job interview with a prim, feminine shop director, ruth sees a headline of a brutal murder. disaster flashes by alongside capitalist mundanity. in the twice-cited film the young girls of rochefort, two beautiful twins’ maze of desire, folly, and chance is interrupted by news of a woman chopped into pieces. we learn of a gruesome murder, and then move on into another cacophony of color and song. much like the films of demy, godard, and varda engaged in the text, we see the shopgirl move through the city with harbingers of brutality, vignettes of mundanity, and flashes of transcendence and ecstasy. i’ve never seen a text engage so effectively the push and pull between writer/director and their protagonist. alongside stories of jean seberg and teresa d’avila, the reader must consider how the female search for experience and ecstasy is narrated, and how placing the object figure as subject implicates narrator, protagonist, and viewer alike.
“I make my green girl kneel. I am the harsh director. She begs and pleads: Please don’t make me do it but there is a clause in her contract. I am reminded of the barbie dolls that I played with as a young girl. I would perform the cruelest acts on my lovelies. I would behead them. I would cut off their hair to make them look like Ken. I would sentence their bodies to various torture machines. Perhaps writing for me is an extension of playing with those dolls. Ruth is my doll. I crave to give birth to her and to commit unspeakable acts of violence against her. I feel twinges of joy at her suffering” (Green Girl, 162).
kate zambreno crafts a spectacular narrative study of what she coins the “green girl.” the green girl is the young-girl in the urban sprawl on the verge of becoming an adult. she is prodded at, projected on, leered at, rendered object, gazed at. she’s looked at by the tourists at the department store she works at, by the male writers who pin their aspirations on her, by herself in her own reflection in store windows, and by its tenderly vicious narrator, a woman-creator who traces her green girl, named ruth, from the banal to disturbing.
zambreno crafts a language of the young-girl that is deeply visual and drawing from the practices of film and the flâneur archive. scenes cut from one to another. in the backdrop of a job interview with a prim, feminine shop director, ruth sees a headline of a brutal murder. disaster flashes by alongside capitalist mundanity. in the twice-cited film the young girls of rochefort, two beautiful twins’ maze of desire, folly, and chance is interrupted by news of a woman chopped into pieces. we learn of a gruesome murder, and then move on into another cacophony of color and song. much like the films of demy, godard, and varda engaged in the text, we see the shopgirl move through the city with harbingers of brutality, vignettes of mundanity, and flashes of transcendence and ecstasy. i’ve never seen a text engage so effectively the push and pull between writer/director and their protagonist. alongside stories of jean seberg and teresa d’avila, the reader must consider how the female search for experience and ecstasy is narrated, and how placing the object figure as subject implicates narrator, protagonist, and viewer alike.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 357 reviews