Book Review - The Girls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow

Synopsis:  Meet the Ames Girls: eleven childhood friends who formed a special bond growing up in Ames, Iowa. As young women, they moved to eight different states, yet managed to maintain an enduring friendship that would carry them through college and careers, marriage and motherhood, dating and divorce, a child's illness and the mysterious death of one member of their group. Capturing their remarkable story, The Girls from Ames is a testament to the deep bonds of women as they experience life's joys and challenges -- and the power of friendship to triumph over heartbreak and unexpected tragedy.

The girls, now in their forties, have a lifetime of memories in common, some evocative of their generation and some that will resonate with any woman who has ever had a friend. Photograph by photograph, recollection by recollection, occasionally with tears and often with great laughter, their sweeping and moving story is shared by Jeffrey Zaslow, Wall Street Journal columnist, as he attempts to define the matchless bonds of female friendship. It demonstrates how close female relationships can shape every aspect of women's lives - their sense of themselves, their choice of men, their need for validation, their relationships with their mothers, their dreams for their daughters - and reveals how such friendships thrive, rewarding those who have committed to them.

First Line:  "The old photos are spread all over the kitchen table, and in so many of them, going back so many years, the eleven girls are completely mashed together."

Random Quote:  "Kelly wished the other girls would understand why she longed for more heroines - or more heroes who weren't just old white presidents.  She wondered why there weren't more female authors or African-American scientists to learn about."

Review:  I am not the target audience for this book.  While the women featured in the book are all my age, I did not grow up in Iowa and I haven't had the same experiences with other women that they have.  We moved a lot when I was growing up, so I haven't really maintained lifelong friendships.  Unfortunately my relationships with women have too often been characterized by the holy trinity of female-on-female violence:  shunning, backbiting, and rumor-mongering.  In my life the people that have been there for me, sustained me, and inspired me have always been men.  I was curious, though - the notion of these women maintaining these friendships was intriguing.

City of Ames Municipal Power Plant - Image via Wikipedia

This was a sweet little read.  I found the stories of these women both interesting and touching without being trivialized by cliche.  The author manages to be a good narrator who fleshes out the story of these friends in a way that captures them as whole people rather than as paper cutouts of the wild girl, the good mother, the dead one.  It would have been easy to do the latter, to do the former without sentimentality is difficult and Zaslow achieves the difficult.

I am by nature leery of sweeping generalizations that seek to explain or categorize behavior by gender - all women are peacemakers, men never share emotional content with their friends - I think these generalizations tend to fall apart when you get into the details of cultural and economic context.  This is at the heart of my quibbles about the book - Zaslow attempts to universalize these stories by reducing them to pat sociological explanations and in doing this he mostly gets in his own way.  He is at his best when he resists the impulse to explain.  These stories are universal because they are human - whether the people in them fit into a neat theoretical package is moot.

I was glad to get to spend some time with these women.  Although my life and choices are very different from theirs, we also share some things in common.  I wish them all well in the next forty years of their friendship.

Thanks to Lisa of TLC Tours for providing the advance copy of this book so I could participate in the author's blog tour!  Visit them here for a list of all the spots on the tour!

Reading Challenges:  ARC Reading Challenge, 2010 A to Z Reading Challenge, 2010 100+ Reading Challenge