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Boys and Girls Like You and Me: Stories

by Aryn Kyle (Goodreads Author)

3.7 of 5 stars 3.70 · rating details · 485 ratings · 115 reviews

ARYN KYLE, whose award-winning novel The God of Animals was hailed as "reason for readers to rejoice" (USA Today), turns her gift for storytelling to the lives of girls and women in this spectacular collection. These eleven stories showcase Kyle’s keen eye for character, her humor, and her uncanny grasp of the loneliness, selfishness, and longing that underlie female exper...more

Hardcover, 240 pages

Published April 20th 2010 by Scribner

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Dec 29, 2012 Miss rated it 2 of 5 stars

So I was in the library today and I was like 'yo self, you are an adult graduating with an English degree in four months. you should read an adult book that is ~literary~ and does not involve magic, spaceships, or category romance'. So I grabbed this. You know what I learned? I was totally right in my prejudices: literary is indeed a code for depressing as all hell*. Basically this is a collection of stories about women screwing up and being sad. Except for the one about the 11 year old boy befr...more

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Jan 02, 2011 Rachel rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010

I found this book while perusing the new books section of my local library. I was in the mood to try reading a book of short stories rather than a full-length novel.

It's hard for me to rate this book. On the one hand, Kyle's writing is fantastic. I left the end of each 20-30 page story thinking, "Not only do I feel I have a good understanding of the character, but I feel I have a good idea of where the character is going to end up even after the story ends. How is it possible to do this successf...more

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Mar 26, 2013 Misha rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Boys and girls like you and me" is a book of short stories by Aryn
Kyle that I have recently read.

Kyle's stories seem like facets of her own life and personality, warts
and all. A British girl coming to America and having to adjust to the
local culture and navigate her way among cliques of popular girls. A
child of a traumatic divorce. A college girl who does not care about
education, wants to smoke pot and drink instead. Somebody who does not
possess any particular talent or drive to succeed, but j...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Tim Baldwin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Aryn Kyle’s Boys and Girls Like You and Me is the female perspective within our post modern world. This collection of short stories is a must read for anyone interested in the trials and trivialities of the female adolescent and beyond, attempting to make sense of this world. Kyle keeps the reader glued to the pages through the emotional familiarities she establishes that are brutally realistic. Even I, as a male reader, felt an empathetic connection to the characters, while adding a new perspec...more Aryn Kyle’s Boys and Girls Like You and Me is the female perspective within our post modern world. This collection of short stories is a must read for anyone interested in the trials and trivialities of the female adolescent and beyond, attempting to make sense of this world. Kyle keeps the reader glued to the pages through the emotional familiarities she establishes that are brutally realistic. Even I, as a male reader, felt an empathetic connection to the characters, while adding a new perspective of what it can mean to be a female. The many themes of love, coming-of-age, rebellion, hatred, beauty and dysfunction rings through as the reader proceeds through the stories. Kyle creates a tone for each story in order to keep variety and to present each character – or lack of character – with a new set of experience, strife, and personality. This undoubtedly keeps the reader anticipating what the next story will hold.

No need to have handy the dictionary for this one, Kyle uses diction for effect not as an sophomoric utensil to wow the reader. The characters voice – or tears – is created largely created through descriptions of the particular scene and through the thought dialogue of the characters. This allows the reader to visualize not only the setting but feel as if he/she is right there next to the character. You can feel the tension when the protagonist is unnerved or you can feel the awkwardness between a distant mother and her daughter, as in the end of Allegiance. Although this book is easy to read through, I would caution readers younger than the high school age to read this, as it does have some pretty crude and sexually explicit descriptions. However, literature is an art form that reveals the reality in which we live just as any painting does, so who am I to sensor this book.

Now, back from a tangent, Boys and Girls Like You and Me does not need to force its way into the shelf next to books that address the struggle to cope with society – like Catcher in the Rye – but is welcomed and mingles nicely among the classics. This book is a piece of true modern literature that illustrates what goes on behind the eyelids of females and the cause and effect that plays a large part in their actions. Kyle also paints a picture of school dynamic in a way that is both alarmingly accurate and begs many questions, asking: what is wrong with our society to allow such social battering?! So, the only way to get a feel for what I am talking about is to pick up Aryn Kyle’s Boys and Girls Like You and Me and read just one of the short stories. This book leaves you with the undeniable truth about what it means to grow up in this modern world and will provoke you to look deeper into the actions and emotions of those that surround you.(less)

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Mar 26, 2013 Doug rated it 4 of 5 stars

My friend Terri wrote a scathing review of this book, and it acted on me like the classic spoiled milk skit: "Ugh, it's terrible! Here, taste it!" I was perversely curious, and after noticing that other reviews of the book seemed wildly polarized -- love it/hate it, not much inbetween -- I was downright intrigued.

I'm in the "love it" camp. I thought it was sharply observed, with snappy, vivid dialog. It's frequently very funny (if in a sometimes uncomfortably dark or "OMG that's SO inappropriate...more

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Terri While I had mixed feelings about the book, I'm glad my review spurred you to read it. As always, these things are a matter of taste. In general, if a...more
Mar 26, 2013 06:38am

Doug Chacon a son gout, right? There are plenty of books that make me angry and annoyed and inclined to shake the viewpoint character in exactly the way yo...more
Mar 26, 2013 07:14am

Terri I haven't read any of Tropper's books yet, but he's on my list. He seems like another love-him-or-hate-him kind of writer. In which camp will Terri en...more
Mar 26, 2013 08:18am

Jan 19, 2012 Wendy Burks rated it 4 of 5 stars

First of all, this book is not for everyone...since it's about women making mistakes/bad decisions/reacting (poorly) to life's challenges, it comes across a little dark (some stories more than others) and as such, is a bit of downer. But since it's short stories, you luckily don't have to live with each character's drama for long. Like some other reviewers said...this book is so hard to rate!! As a collection of short stories, there was reason throughout the book for ratings all the way from 1 t...more First of all, this book is not for everyone...since it's about women making mistakes/bad decisions/reacting (poorly) to life's challenges, it comes across a little dark (some stories more than others) and as such, is a bit of downer. But since it's short stories, you luckily don't have to live with each character's drama for long. Like some other reviewers said...this book is so hard to rate!! As a collection of short stories, there was reason throughout the book for ratings all the way from 1 to 5. But, I went w/ a 4 for the following reasons: I found it @ Dollar General for $1, so it was a great read for the price! The author did a great job developing the stories and characters in such short period of time. I couldn't put it down - each short story led me to the next, and then the next. Maybe I also wanted to get through it to a more uplifting book as well...? It bothered me that most of the down-and-out(and sometimes unlikable) characters smoked and/or abused alcohol and/or sex - even the underaged ones. This made for a sometimes depressing window into their lives. However, the one story which centered around a boy (The Captain's Club) was really sweet, and involved an innocent, supportive relationship between a father's kind, wide-eyed girlfriend and a coming-of-age teenage boy (even though the tone of the other stories had me expecting a darker motive for their friendship at every turn). The stories were provocative, as intended, and took the reader to places they (hopefully!) never need go themselves. It also reminds us that although the characters are a bit exaggerated and sometimes seemingly two-dimensional, everyone loses it sometimes and need to take a brief detour before getting back on track...

"This is how you ended up here. You were poor or unlucky or unwise. You told a lie or broke a rule or wanted something you weren't supposed to have. You ended up here because you didn't care where you ended up, because you were selfish or impulsive or naive, because you made a bad decision, not once, but again and again and again and again. You ended up here because you could not see what any idiot could see. This is not a place where people come to build a life -- this is a place where people fall apart."

The last story ends beautifully with this....
"That apartment, that town, it wasn't a place where anyone stayed. One way or another we would both be gone soon. Neither of us would ever go back.
And so I wish now that I could have that day to live again, that golden walk to the car. I should have told you how the light fell on you in that classroom, the way the atmosphere softened and brightened around you as you played. And -- how had I never seen it before? -- you were so beautiful and elegant and beloved. In the moment you played the last note, your bow still quivering over the string, that hot, crowded room drew a collective breath and I cannot recall a fuller, more radiant moment in my life.
And this, this is the part I want you to know. That moment lives in my head, a thing with breath and blood. A present tense. An always -- that sudden blossoming of grace and beauty and competence, all of it so unexpected, all of it so undeserved, and the feeling or knowledge or faith that somehow, everything was going to be all right."(less)

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Apr 17, 2011 Shannon rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories

If I had to describe this book in two words, here are the two I would choose: unrelentingly depressing. While there are certainly provocative stories in this collection, taken as a whole they sat on my chest like a boulder. And that was true even though I read the book over the course of more than a week, taking time in between to read two other books.

The most interesting story for me was Femme. I liked the use of first person plural narration and while this story was disturbing, it was far less...more

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May 27, 2010 Laurie rated it 5 of 5 stars

I don’t usually care much for short stories; I don’t understand them most of the time, and so they bore me. This collection is different. It grabbed me from the first paragraph and never let go. In each of these eleven stories about young women and girls (and one young boy), I recognized either myself or people I know. There are many, many ways that a woman can mess up her life, and several of these ways are brought to living, breathing, despairing life in these tales. It’s uncanny how vivid the...more

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Jun 28, 2011 Brian rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After the first story in this collection--"Brides"--my hopes were pretty high. The story was tight and had interesting characters, a movable plot, and a hook that kept me reading. But as I kept going through each story, the more and more I became disappointed in the payoffs that Kyle provided. Make no mistake, these stories are interesting and fun to read, but too often the story relies on the situation the characters are in rather than what the characters do within that situation. Even when the...more

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May 20, 2010 Jane rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-story-collection

I had a hard time rating this one. It's truly somewhere between a 1.5 and a 3.5. If I cared enough I would rate each story individually. A few of the stories, namely Nine (5 stars!), Captain's Club (5 stars!) and A Lot Like Fun (4 stars! I was giddy that she name dropped Nintendo in this one!) were really exceptionally well done. The former two being almost as unforgettable and haunting as a Raymond Carver story! Huge compliment for you Miss Kyle! But the rest of the stories fall a bit flat, tho...more

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May 12, 2010 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm not sure why I don't read more short stories. I certainly know they're much more difficult to write than novels. In writing classes, teachers told us: Every word counts. Every sentence must move the story forward. Yikes...

As I read Boys and Girls Like You and Me: Stories, I saw that advice in action. Here are a few of the opening sentences to the stories: "Tess lied sometimes." "That was the year I thought I'd never be happy again." "For a while they were all about celebrating." Definitely m...more

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Jul 05, 2011 The Joy of Booking added it

This is an excellent collection of short stories exploring the process of (mostly female) childhood and teenage development. Every single story captured my attention and stayed with me for hours after reading. I'd read The God of Animals a few years ago for a book club, so I was eager to pick up a collection of short stories by the same author, and I was not disappointed.

It's really hard for me to pick a favorite, but if I absolutely had to, I think I might go with "Nine," the story of a little...more

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Jul 21, 2010 Taylor rated it 4 of 5 stars

I can't make up my mind about this book! On the one hand, the writing was great, and the stories were incredibly well-plotted. It's an undeniably polished and skillful collection. On the other, I didn't like a single one of the adult protagonists (although I did love her child protagonists). I couldn't tell if I was supposed to like them, in which case Kyle failed and made them sort of miserably unsympathetic, or if I was supposed to think they were assholes, which I did. It's not that I think I...more

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Jul 14, 2010 Rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars

I would give this a 4.5 if Goodreads let me.

Some of the stories in this book I loved so much that I read them twice ("A Lot Like Fun", "Boys and Girls Like You and Me," and "Captain's Club"). One of them I HATED ("Allegiance"). A few other stories were pretty good and then there were a few that grossed me out a little bit.
After the first story, "Brides," I thought that the collection might just be copying Miranda July a bit too much. The title even reminded me of Miranda July's "Me and You and...more

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Apr 30, 2011 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories

If I could give this 2.5 stars, I would. I loved the first two stories and began to think that perhaps my idea of myself as someone who doesn't like short stories was wrong. The third story was okay, and then it went downhill from there except for the final paragraph of the final story (Boys and Girls Like You and Me). By this time I was reading impatiently, ready to be done with the book. And then, at the end of a story about loneliness and bad choices and sadness and women who let men control...more

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Apr 07, 2013 Carrie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a compelling book of short stories by a clearly exceptional writer, whose style reminds me of a cross between Anne Beatty and Lorrie Moore. I like how the author with fairly minimal descriptions paints a rich picture, and she intelligently grasps unusual and dramatic situations. That being said, I agree with those reviewers who observed that the situations tended to overpower the characters a bit, and there were times when I wanted less story and even more depth. I also feel the first st...more

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May 18, 2011 Rose Ann rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads, read-in-2011

I actually give this 3.5 stars, but Goodreads does not allow for that.
I rated each story individually, and got an average of 3.45

I've never really been interested in short stories before. I guess I just always felt like they wouldn't be complete.
I have to say, I am half way through this book and I find the stories interesting and I am enjoying reading them. They are not happy stories at all.....my heart broke for Tess in "Nine".
I really like the author's writing style, and I feel like I know the...more

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Jun 19, 2011 Donna rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads, own

As I read the first few stories in this collection, I was enthralled; with characters, with the narrative, with the plots. Then I moved into the second half, and I was re-reading the first stories, they became repetitive. Ms Kyle has her style, and she's good at it, but she might want to stick to publishing stories individually in magazines; there is not enough breadth in her material after a few stories to provide enough variety for a whole book of them. That being said, as is usually the case,...more

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Jun 09, 2011 Clementine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, fiction, short-stories, favorites

Aryn Kyle’s short story collection is a compilation of stories about girls and women who are struggling. The girls in Kyle’s stories are struggling with their identities and sense of self. They are women who are like people readers know in their own lives, and they are women that readers might even recognize in themselves.

The stories in Kyle’s short story collection illustrate the trials and tribulations of girlhood in the modern United States. The female protagonists present in her stories make...more Aryn Kyle’s short story collection is a compilation of stories about girls and women who are struggling. The girls in Kyle’s stories are struggling with their identities and sense of self. They are women who are like people readers know in their own lives, and they are women that readers might even recognize in themselves.

The stories in Kyle’s short story collection illustrate the trials and tribulations of girlhood in the modern United States. The female protagonists present in her stories make mistakes and some of the poorest decisions possible. Some of these are characters are drowning in their own lives, and others whose actions should make them completely unsympathetic. Yet Kyle’s skillful portrayal of these women allows even the most irritating character to become empathetic, and Kyle’s ability to pull back the layers of each character’s actions and emotions makes each story a much more rich, satisfying experience.

In “Nine,” Kyle manages to capture the voice and behavior of Tess, a young girl struggling to cope with the abandonment of her by her mother. She acts out in small ways, telling lies and making up stories to compensate for her sadness. The story is both heartbreaking and funny, and the characters are some of the most vivid that I’ve recently read in short stories.

“Company of Strangers” follows Lilly, a young woman who is reconnected with her brother after their father’s death. Lilly is troubled, and when her brother leaves his two children in her care for a few hours, she takes them to a pirate-themed restaurant before bringing them back to the apartment of a waiter she meets for a one-night stand. Even as the reader recognizes how completely inappropriately she is behaving, Lilly is sympathetic; that is the power of Kyle’s writing.

In the last, eponymous story, the depressed narrator waits for her married boyfriend to visit her in her crappy apartment in a dying town. She squanders her days getting drunk and writing term papers for college students. It is an unlikely friendship with a troubled teenager in her building that begins to bring her out of her funk.

Kyle’s stories are fascinating and heartfelt. This is the rare kind of collection that begs to be read in a single sitting. Highly, highly recommended, for fans of short stories and fans of reading in general.

Boys and Girls Like You and Me by Aryn Kyle. Scribner, 2010. Library copy.(less)

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Jul 29, 2010 Allyson rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book was just mean although the writing was very clever. Few of the characters are at all likable or sympathetic. They all are either pathetic, evil, cruel, twisted, or just uninteresting. While these are short stories, so not the same as a novel, I can't help thinking of Rachel Cusk's recent book which I also found to be inhabited by unlikable characters, but somehow not as distasteful as these were.
She really creates her characters so well, and I remember quite liking her novel The God of...more

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Apr 19, 2011 Carolyn rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: for-book-club

PROS
-- I like short stories b/c they force the author to boil the story down to the most essential scenes. I feel like I get their key points in a short space. Kyle did this well.
-- The writing was pretty good. Not beautiful, but well done. She had some really good moments where she framed a character's perspective in such a way that it felt new to me. I love when that happens.
-- She doesn't glamorize sin. These are not soap operas. They're more like "About Schmidt" - showing how bleak life is f...more

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May 24, 2010 xq rated it 3 of 5 stars

I went into this book not really knowing what it was about; honestly, I pretty much picked it up because I was attracted to the cover art and enjoy short stories.

I'm not sure how to adequately verbalize why I liked this book - I enjoyed the range in narratives (protagonists ranged from like 5-year-olds to mid-20s), but there was something about the quiet sadness with which the author described their respective worlds and the actions of the people in their lives that really caught my interest.

Al...more

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Jul 01, 2010 Katie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories-2010

A collection of very well-written short stories, most centered on the trials and tribulations of women and girls at various stages of life. A common theme throughout the stories is the bad choices these characters make, the reasons why, and the outcomes that follow. I guess this is a pretty typical writing platform, but Aryn Kyle pulls these stories off with such finesse, it never gets old. I'm very impressed with her style and the control with which she writes. She truly captures the emotions o...more

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Jun 10, 2010 Kdevoli rated it 4 of 5 stars

Aryn wrote The God of Animals a few years back, a book I really enjoyed, which apparently started as a short story (this author's true strength) but she received so many pleas from readers to continue the story that she turned it into a novel. This is a book of short stories, none of which I particularly would have wanted to read a whole novel about, but just enough to keep it interesting and wondering where she was going with it. At the center of each story is a young woman with emotional bagga...more

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Nov 08, 2012 Nenia Campbell rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: x-2010s, i-collect-short-stories, ladybooks, i-abuse-you-because-i-love-you, pedobear-seal-of-approval, fake-people-real-problems, repulsive-protagonist, reviewed

I don't know about you, but the boys and girls featured in this collection of short stories weren't much like me at all. Her first book, The God of Animals, was really impressive. Clearly, Aryn Kyle is as big a fan of animals as author Sara Gruen. I really like when authors write about things they feel passionate about; that passion really shows through the story and makes it glow. I learned so much about horses!

Boys and Girls Like You and Me is not about animals. It's about boys and girls whose...more

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Feb 28, 2013 Terri rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 21st-century-fiction, short-stories, cpl

Two stories here work for me: "Captains Club" and the title story, "Boys and Girls Like You and Me". I'd give "Captains Club" 3.5 or 4 stars and "Boys and Girls Like You and Me" 3 or 3.5. In the rest, most of the characters (mostly female), except some children who come out pretty well, are just awful, and not in particularly poignant or interesting ways. They seem to have just given in to the worst of life in a defeatist way. They can't get over anything, they can't make anything of themselves,...more

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Oct 05, 2012 Hailley rated it 4 of 5 stars

I haven't picked up a short story collection in a while so reading Boys and Girls Like You and Me by Aryn Kyle was a great way to jump back in it. The general theme and thread of these short stories was about love, in all forms, and most of the time, love that didn't work. The stories seemed believable, the characters one I might run into on my campus or later in life.

There are 11 stories and overall, it's a pretty quick read. I had many favorites such as "Economics," "Captain's Club," "Femme,"...more I haven't picked up a short story collection in a while so reading Boys and Girls Like You and Me by Aryn Kyle was a great way to jump back in it. The general theme and thread of these short stories was about love, in all forms, and most of the time, love that didn't work. The stories seemed believable, the characters one I might run into on my campus or later in life.

There are 11 stories and overall, it's a pretty quick read. I had many favorites such as "Economics," "Captain's Club," "Femme," and "Boys and Girls Like You and Me." Each story stood out to me and when looking back on the table of contents, these stories called to me.

"Economics" discusses not only a sister-sister relationship, but also about the secrets we keep from family members. The narrator moves in with her college-aged sister and starts working at a family-runned shop that is basically going nowhere. She befriends the owner's daughter, Amy, who, while appearing to be flawless to her father, is actually a boatload of crazy. Amy is dating Hank and her everyday thoughts move away from school and focus on Hank. Both the narrator's sister and Amy have to take an impossibly hard economics class and mid-way through the semester Amy gives up. Things go bad from there and the final scene is the narrator leaving the shop as the father has just discovered his daughter is not as perfect as she seemed. The focus of this story was on the cash drawer and the father's insistence that the number on the roll make the amount of actual money in the cash register. The narrator often finds the number on the roll doesn't match the actual amount of money. She either adds change or removes the extra to make the two equal. This simple, physical act parallels what is going on with Amy and her father. Amy removes or adds pieces of herself so that she matches the Amy her father sees.

"Captain's Club" takes to the water as two boys, CJ and Tommy, go on a cruise. CJ's father decides to take a cruise with his new girlfriend and allows CJ to bring along one friend. Unfortunately, all of CJ's friends are not allowed to go, the mothers are concerned. That's how Tommy, who is more of a social outcast, comes along. While CJ and his father would rather go to the casino or the arcade, Tree (the girlfriend) and Tommy bond and decide to make the most out of their trip. Tommy develops a school-boy crush, a crush which Tree is unaware of. And just as Tree is unaware of Tommy's crush, Tree is unaware that CJ's father is only looking for his next conquest.

"Femme" is probably the shortest story in the collection and is written in second person. The story asks the reader to imagine a friend, who in the end, is more of a fake friend. They cheat with your husband, get what they want, and pull you in to their so-called "secret circle." While at first, you are absorbed with this friendship, eventually you see their flaws and the friendship dies. I love the last line: "Your life belongs to you, just like we always told you it did." While you might have spent the past couple of pages agreeing and remembering that friend, the last line stops you in your tracks. For me, I reconsidered the people I was thinking of. Sure, they might not have done the nicest things but in the end, they did make me better. They did give me good advice. And they were right, my life belongs to me.

The final story of the collection is also the title of the collection, "Boys and Girls Like You and Me." The narrator befriends the neighbor girl, Iris. A weird friendship forms. I won't spoil the whole story, but the final paragraph really got me. It was one of those sentences I read and reread because I needed several times to really soak it in.

"And this, this is the part I want you to know: That moment lives in my head, a thing with breath and blood. A present tense. An always -- that sudden blossoming of grace and beauty and competence, all of it so unexpected, all of it so undeserved, and the feeling or knowledge or faith that somehow, someday, everything was going to be all right."

Again, Kyle stresses the idea everything is going to be all right in the end. Maybe the theme was love, that love is imperfect. Or maybe Kyle just wanted the reader to remember they are people out there like ourselves. That we all do silly things, that we all lie, that we all try to hard and sometimes fail. No matter what message you take from this book, it's definitely one you should pick up.(less)

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Mar 18, 2012 Roger DeBlanck rated it 5 of 5 stars

Aryn Kyle follows her impressive debut novel, The God of Animals, with an equally formidable collection of stories. As she did with poignancy in her novel, the eleven fast-moving, finely crafted stories in Boys and Girls Like You and Me are tender, haunting, melancholy, and at stretches downright crushing in their exploration of loneliness and loss. Dealing with the source of pain that produces self-doubt and self-loathing, these stories pull you with an anticipatory sense of alarm into the live...more Aryn Kyle follows her impressive debut novel, The God of Animals, with an equally formidable collection of stories. As she did with poignancy in her novel, the eleven fast-moving, finely crafted stories in Boys and Girls Like You and Me are tender, haunting, melancholy, and at stretches downright crushing in their exploration of loneliness and loss. Dealing with the source of pain that produces self-doubt and self-loathing, these stories pull you with an anticipatory sense of alarm into the lives of an array of emotionally wounded characters. Under Kyle's skill, the hardships these people endure are life-altering to a point of revelation that oftentimes gives them slivers of hope to move forward or beyond their burdensome condition or circumstances.

Kyle is a sensitive writer and although she sees a world fraught with hurt, it is not a place where adversity and pain consume to the point of defeat. Rather, adversity serves as an opportunity for growth and hope. Sadness and loss dominate life for her characters, but only if one allows them to afflict their spirit. One gains an understanding that what is learned will be immensely valuable, if an individual is ready to embrace a certain degree of life’s shortcomings. The story that illustrates Kyle's themes best is "Captain's Club." In this piece, a solitary young boy finds company with the girlfriend of his friend's father while the four of them are vacationing on a cruise ship. The lessons of life the boy learns announce the depth of his compassion, especially during a moment of epiphany while he watches a blazing sunset from the ship's deck. Kyle creates a brilliant scene with a breathtaking description of the sunset to show how this boy is experiencing something profound that will serve him instrumentally for the rest of his life. In literature, lists exist everywhere to rank the best of what writers do. If a category is out there for best sunsets, Kyle's scene and description secure a distinctive spot.

Other strong stories in this volume, which lend to affirming Kyle's talents and representing her theme of how adversity leads to revelation, are "Nine" in which a lonely little girl, prone to stretching the truth, gains keen awareness of how her actions lead to misunderstandings and the title piece "Boys and Girls Like You and Me" in which two emotionally-distraught women, one in early adulthood and the other in her teens, find solace in the company of each other. Kyle certainly does not shy away from exploring despair and the bleakness that can afflict our lives, and readers may wish to see her characters more regularly lift their wayward souls out of their quagmires. To pity and feel sorry for them is not the point. Kyle is pursuing more than a depiction of lost souls; she is keen with examining life's tendency to pull people down, and in her best stories we know her characters will pull themselves together and find a way to persevere and find hope.(less)

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Apr 13, 2011 Jodi Paloni rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-story-collection

I read a hardcover copy of this book last summer. It's almost a year later and the characters in these stories still haven't let me go. Aryn Kyle has a particular knack for capturing the vibrancy and voice of her young narrators: kids, teens, twenties, and adults in the presence of youth. Reading these stories, I laughed out loud and gasped at the darkness of human nature, sometimes in the same sentence. This is a book I would recommend to my mother, my teenage daughters, and all of my middle-ag...more

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May 16, 2010 megan rated it 3 of 5 stars

A collection of short stories told at various transitional points in young female's lives. Young people ranging from 8 years old to (I think) mid-20s. I most enjoyed the story "Captain's Club" about a young boy is asked to join a schoolmate on a Mediterranean Cruise--but only after everyone else in his class said they could not go. He befriend's the father of his schoolmate's young girlfriend, Tree--both outcasts on this particular vacation.

A quick read and especially good for someone with litt...more

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About Aryn Kyle

Aryn Kyle graduated from the University of Montana writing program. In 2004 her short story Foaling Season, now the first chapter of this novel, won a National Magazine Award for Fiction for The Atlantic Monthly. Kyle spent most of her childhood in Grand Junction, Colorado, and now lives in New York City.

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Quotes from Boys and Girls Like Yo...

“Stop torturing yourself, her friends said. Stop living in the past. He was gone. Capital G--Gone. He wasn't coming back. She should focus not on the pain, but on the possibility. Something good would come from all this heartache, something always did. Everything, her friends told her, happened for a reason. She should start looking for the silver lining.

She thought she might start looking for new friends.” — 6 people liked it

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