Typical Girls: New Stories by Smart Women Book

By and large the contributors to this anthology are hipsters first, writers second. The writer bios include such details as "played a lead role as a dominatrix" and "had a story optioned for the screen by Madonna." Could an "unhip" girl have made it into Typical Girls? Probably not, and since most good writers are dorky hermits, this collection definitely reads like amateur night. A story called "Saved," cowritten by Poppy Z. Brite and Christa Faust, contains this howler of a line: "Billy felt an orgasm stalking him." There are lots of warmed-over '80s sex shockers--Mary Gaitskill without the poetic undertow. Nevertheless there are some good moments: Throwing Muses singer Kristen Hersh offers something between a journal entry and a manifesto with "The Snowballing of Alt.Rock." It's a nice, chatty piece you wouldn't find in either a music magazine or a literary journal. The standout is Guinevere Turner's "Cookie and Me." Turner cowrote the film Go Fish, and she's a true writer's writer, with a warm, ironic, and hopeful vision. "Cookie and Me" is the story of a drunken cab ride where the narrator tries to pick up on the driver, only to find later that the whole thing was filmed, MTV Real World-style, and is being shown over and over on television. The story keeps reflecting back on itself, the girl in the cab becomes the girl on television, someone entirely alien. Turner knows what she's doing and where she is going. Among all the cool kids, she's the one the dorks can trust. --Emily White Read More