A tender, funny, and sublime collection of stories about the lives of modern girls and women from award-winning, bestselling author Aryn Kyle.
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Jan 02, 2011
Rachel
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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 possibl More...
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 possibl More...
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Jan 19, 2012
Wendy
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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
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Apr 17, 2011
Shannon
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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, i More...
The most interesting story for me was Femme. I liked the use of first person plural narration and while this story was disturbing, i More...
May 27, 2010
Laurie
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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
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Jun 28, 2011
Brian
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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. Eve
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May 20, 2010
Jane
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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
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May 12, 2010
Lisa
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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 the More...
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 the More...
Jul 17, 2011
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," More...
It's really hard for me to pick a favorite, but if I absolutely had to, I think I might go with "Nine," More...
Jul 21, 2010
Taylor
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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 th
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Jul 14, 2010
Rachel
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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 More...
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 More...
Apr 30, 2011
Erin
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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
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May 18, 2011
Rose Ann
rated it:
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' More...
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' More...
Jun 19, 2011
Donna
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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 ca
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Jun 09, 2011
Clementine
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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 h More...
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 h More...
Jul 29, 2010
Allyson
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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 Th More...
She really creates her characters so well, and I remember quite liking her novel Th More...
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Apr 19, 2011
Carolyn
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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" - More...
-- 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" - More...
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May 24, 2010
xq
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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 More...
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 More...
Jul 01, 2010
Katie
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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 emotio
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Jun 10, 2010
Kdevoli
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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
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Apr 13, 2011
Jodi
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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
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May 16, 2010
megan
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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 g More...
A quick read and especially g More...
May 27, 2011
kp
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I loved these stories. Kyle has an unerring sense of the ironic and specializes in protagonists who are lost in quite ordinary ways. Their moments of understanding, either in media res or in retrospect, are frank and quietly moving, sometimes laced with despair, sometimes with hope. Kyle's style is also impressive: understated, wry, and suffused with insight into the hidden chambers of the human heart. A writer who has many affinities with two of my favorite short story masters: Alice Munro a
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Jan 04, 2011
Holly
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"Boys and Girls Like You and Me" is a collection of short stories with women or girls as the main characters. I enjoy short stories very much, especially when tired at night and getting through an entire story in 15 pages is more satiating then the equivalent, just a chapter of one novel.
I found these short stories to be slightly disturbing whether the character was nine years old or twenty-nine. There is a story of a young girl who's mother passed away and accumulates multip More...
I found these short stories to be slightly disturbing whether the character was nine years old or twenty-nine. There is a story of a young girl who's mother passed away and accumulates multip More...
May 13, 2011
Jennifer
rated it:
Well written, evocative, and melancholy short story collection. Won this one through goodreads giveaways. Some stories were better than others - my favorite was Captain's Table which actually gave me goosebumps when I finished reading it because the end was just so beautiful. Although I most say the overall tone of each story was so sad and depressing it left me hoping that this was just creative and not a reflection of the author's real life mental state!
Mar 06, 2011
Marielle
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Hard to get started. I had a hard time connecting with the stories whose main characters were young girls still in elementary school. i loved her use of children in the stories as long as they were not the main character, for then I felt they brought a sense of perspective to the problem at hand. The story that sticks in my head is the one which takes in high school between the two girls, the actress and her protoge. It was refreshing to read a story about how people take advantage of each
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Jun 26, 2010
Danielle
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Allegiance is a really gorgeous story, and it may be that having it ahead of time ruined the others for me because they didn't feel as sharp in comparison. I did also like the title story, Boys and Girls like you and me, but in some of the other stories I felt that the character motivations were somewhat lacking or underdeveloped, and that the characters just weren't as present and interesting as they were in the last two stories.
May 30, 2011
Karen M
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Each story is different but with a commonality of girls with the exception of Captain's Club.
They are touching, honest, loving and painful to read. The author has an insight into life that I don't have but I can appreciate her stories and here and there I can identify with what she's saying. Some are women/girls who gave up their lives for love, women who destroyed their lives for love and women who destroyed other women for love. Love which is selfish, dark, creepy, kind, generou More...
They are touching, honest, loving and painful to read. The author has an insight into life that I don't have but I can appreciate her stories and here and there I can identify with what she's saying. Some are women/girls who gave up their lives for love, women who destroyed their lives for love and women who destroyed other women for love. Love which is selfish, dark, creepy, kind, generou More...
Jun 01, 2010
Patricia
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This book of short stories by Aryn Kyle is compelling, and at times, downright hilarious. It's titled "Boys and Girls. . . " but almost every story revolves around young, female protagonists who are ne'er do rights but have much to teach nonetheless. Most memorable/touching was the one story that centered on a boy who grows up on a Mediterranean Cruise, "Captain's Club." Also notably funny: "Take Care", a story of a young girl who takes the place of her troubled old
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Jul 26, 2010
Lacy
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Quick and dirty stories about every day life. Only one story is told from the boy's point of view, every other one is about a girl. Some of them deal with hard subject matter, but all of them were very real stories about sex and family and death and stress and so on. If you like short stories, especially stories about everyday life, I recommend this book.
Jul 22, 2010
Charlye
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Boys and Girls was not a good book. Every single page was depressing, except for one line on the very last page that I kinda liked. Most of the stories were about women, and they were not empowering or positive or uplifting. They were sad situations for women who seemed content to sit back and let them fill their lives, instead of changing things. I did not like it.
