Girl Crazy

by Russell Smith

Tightly plotted and fast paced, Girl Crazy is a cinematic ride through one man’s obsession with a younger woman. Justin, a dissatisfied community college teacher, meets Jenna and is attracted at once to her mixture of toughness, vulnerability and ripe sexuality. Jenna is unlike anyone Justin has ever known -- through her he discovers a world of drugs and sex, casual violence and intimidation that at first frightens and then thrills him. Justin falls deeper into Jenna’s thrall, particularly as her erratic behaviour keeps him guessing. When Jenna ends the relationship abruptly, Justin finds he isn’t willing to let go of this new life, or of Jenna, without a fight.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Novels

400 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2010

About the author

Russell Claude Smith is a Canadian writer and newspaper columnist. Smith's novels and short stories are mostly set in Toronto, where he lives.

Smith grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He attended the Halifax Grammar School and Queen Elizabeth High School, and studied French literature at Queen's University, the University of Poitiers, and the University of Paris III. He has an MA in French from Queen's.

Russell Smith is one of Canada’s funniest and nastiest writers. His previous novels, including How Insensitive and Girl Crazy, are records of urban frenzy and exciting underworlds. He writes a provocative weekly column on the arts in the national Globe and Mail, and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Guelph. He hates folk music.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I started reading this book, I thought it was from the viewpoint of a young teenage boy, then as the book goes on, I realized not only was the protagonist much older than I thought, he was also a college professor. At this point, I got very, very depressed about the the immaturity of supposed adult men. Justin, our professor gets involved with a young woman that should have a flashing neon light above her head proclaiming 'messed up, stay away, messed up, stay away!' Justin ignores the very obvious signs, and just plunges head into this woman's life, much to his own peril. It's not so much that Justin is stupid, more that he chooses to make stupid decisions.

[Brian Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Ah, men. They do some pretty stupid things when it comes to women. In Russell Smith’s Girl Crazy, college professor Justin falls for a 20-year-old girl who clearly has issues. But Justin can’t seem to stay away and he goes to some pretty dark places as a result. Smith’s book had me turning the pages and there are some very well-written (read: hot) sex scenes in the book. My one disappointment was that, plot-wise, nothing really surprised me. As a reader, I wanted a curveball that never really came.

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the book was really well written and I enjoyed reading it, I never once connected with the characters. Sometimes I wondered if I was supposed to. Sometimes I wondered if I was just not the target audience (it is written from a male perspective). Sometimes I wondered if I'm too Vancouver. Just kidding. But it is set in Toronto, just saying.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Helena Flo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved GIRL CRAZY. I couldn't decide if I'm supposed to despise the lead character, pity him, or identify with his reckless, head-over-heels lust and nerdiness.

Justin is a college professor who has a prick boss, is between girlfriends and spends 90 percent of his time thinking about nipples and trying to see through women's blouses. The other 10% of the time he's lost in a fantasy world of his favorite computer game Sandstorm III (Sheik Assassin), blowing away Republic Guard bunkers with Mk19 grenade launchers.

When he meets Jenna, a 19-year old tattooed, thong-wearing pothead stripper, he falls under the thrall of her sexuality. Before long he's drawn into the Toronto underworld of after hours poker games, guns, drugs, and men's clubs. All of this in his desperate attempt to prove he is a dangerous man to Jenna, who soon wants nothing to do with him.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Russell Smith is a guilty pleasure. I admit, I love Toronto-centric fiction, and this was just the sordid type of thing I like. Russell is a pretty cool character himself, and, as an aside, his wife has recently written a book about her time as an alcoholic new mother that's on my to read list.

[Dorinda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I HATED this book. I'm the type of person who has to finish a book, no matter what. I put this book down for good when I was about two thirds through it. It was awful. I wasn't a fan of the long, drawn out story line, nor the terrible character development. Waste of my time.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is a semi autobiographical book about a perv.

[Zanne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Douglas Coupland called and he wants his high school creative writing project back.

[Christie (The Ludic Reader) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Justin, the protagonist of Russell Smith’s novel Girl Crazy, is a 32-year-old community college instructor fresh from a break-up with his long-time girlfriend Genevieve. Justin knows it is “a little weird that they kept making plans to see each other and pretending to be friends so soon after the breakup.”

One day, Justin meets Jenna near a payphone. She’s dressed in yoga gear that leaves little to the imagination and Justin is smitten…or aroused…or something. Jenna, it turns out, is in need of medical attention and Justin has a friend who’s a resident at a local hospital. This chance encounter leads Justin into a life that is totally unfamiliar to him.

Although Justin has a grown-up job, it doesn’t take him long to start behaving like an adolescent. That’s the main thing that stood out to me: Justin is immature. But then, I also acted like a crazy person at around that time in my life, or perhaps just a few short years before then, so I shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Perhaps he only seems super young and ridiculous to me because he is half my age.

Once he and Jenna hook up, it’s like a fuse has been lit. Justin is fueled by lust and manipulated into behaving in ways I can’t imagine are in character for him pre-Jenna. I kept wondering why he was doing such crazy things: casually hanging out with criminals, buying drugs via the Internet, seeking out underground card games. But then, I did some stupid things when I was young, usually because there was a boy involved.

It’s interesting to see this world through a guy’s eyes, actually and Justin sees everything through sex. Women are reduced to the sum of their sexiest parts: “a stripe of her belly was visible”, “her lips were so full they looked swollen”, “her thong, rising like a tattoo from between her muscles.” Smith describes sex without romance, but that doesn’t mean it’s not well-written. But it’s also not erotica. But I don’t think this is a love story, either.

Justin is obsessed with Jenna and he wants to save her from herself. Jenna, however, is not interested in being saved. I don’t think she misrepresents herself; I think Justin is thinking with his dick.

I don’t know how I feel about Girl Crazy. I don’t think I am the target audience, but I had zero trouble turning the pages. I would definitely read more by this Canadian writer.

[Max · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is about the metamorphosis of Justin, a meek contractual instructor at a second-rate college, into a fully-fledged, drug-dealing, heat-packing member of Toronto's lowlife. The main character is not very likeable to begin with, and little happens to arouse any sympathy toward him. The object of his obsession, a nutcase druggie/stripper is equally unpleasant. The other characters are more accessible, but not well-developed enough to make the reader care about what happens to them either.

I checked this book out of the library because I read in the reviews that it contained some 'steamy' graphic sex scenes. Unfortunately, these would be better described as 'clinically' graphic sex scenes. There's no need to read this book in private - unless someone looks over your shoulder and sees what you're reading you could just as well be reading the newspaper.

What's good about this book is that it's funny. It's filled with golden nuggets of satire and irony. Here are some examples.

Justin is in a strip bar, watching stripper bending over in front of one the other patrons. "He must have had his nose almost touching her anus. If you really liked anuses, there could be no better view."

The male low-lifes in the book like to wear sports jerseys (soccer, not hockey). (Eventually Justin acquires one himself.) Justin is about to get beat up by a gangster wearing such a shirt who has broken into his apartment and ambushed him there. Justin says, "What is Umbro, anyway?" The gangster is momentarily distracted. "Some kind of company, I guess," he says.

Justin is on the phone with his ex while at the same time he is typing on his computer, trying to guess a password set by his boss. He is only half-listening to her as he tries "JERKOFF", "ASSWAD", "TITSTICK" and "FUCKPAD", as well as "DOUCHEHAT", "ASSKNOB" and "DICKASS".

If this sounds like your cup of tea then you'll love this book!

[Richard Schwindt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Russel Smith sets this novel in what feels like lost corners of Toronto, which is appropriate given his lost protagonist, Justin. As he begins to bounce along his erotic journey we sense his unraveling and inability to make sense of a world that is more chaotic and disturbing that he anticipated. From sex through video games, he seems unable to locate his core and move forward. While preoccupied with an object of desire; in the end she only seems to reinforce his emptiness. Smith is a good stylist; it is easy to place yourself in the story; to see and feel what the characters experience. He puts his sideline as a fashion writer to good use by providing us with a clear eye on an uncertain world. I loved this as an ironic drama and a version the inner and outer night journey. Worth reading.

[Jenn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn’t connect with or like the main character at all. He was rewarded for misogynistic behaviours, was generally an entitled asshat at the beginning and the end of the book.I’m left unsatisfied bc I feel this character deserves a consequence that he never gets. Not sure if this in intentional or not, as the overall message of the book is unclear: could be‘good guys never win’ or ‘people are all messed up’ - I can’t figure it out.

[Darrell Reimer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poor Justin, sliding uncomfortably into his 30s and their manifold disconsolations. He has a former girlfriend who’s “moved on” but keeps calling, he’s an academic teaching a blow-off course, and he’s ensconced in a crappy, sweltering apartment. He registers the beautiful women available to everybody but himself, the supercilious boss pulling in some sort of action on the side, but these are indecipherable mysteries he can’t quite break into. At least not until he meets Jenna, a 20-year-old stripper who crash-lands in Justin’s life, pulling a train of contraband and violence behind her.

As improbable as this platform sounds, it launches the tautly strung thriller that is Girl Crazy. Russell Smith’s blurb-buddy Barbara Gowdy invokes Elmore Leonard (and Nabokov), but I was put more in mind of Tapping the Source, by Leonard protégé Kem Nunn, in which a naif figures out the way things work by blundering heedlessly into a very bad scene. As with Tapping, Smith’s book rests on a sturdy architecture of artful intrigue. And yes, dear Canadian readers, there is some sex: not the perfumed meditations of Nabokov or even Updike, but the horny-porny variety. Readers discomfited by or inured to such pulpy pleasures should stay away; the rest of us can enjoy Smith’s terrific mash-up of pulp-slash-satire-slash-psychological-thriller.

[Janet Berkman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved Russell Smith's columns on men's style in the Globe and Mail, and so was interested to check out his fiction. This novel follows Justin, a thirty-ish English instructor at a community college in Toronto who stops to assist a young woman in distress, waiting for an ambulance on the street. He ends up accompanying her to the hospital, they become friends, and quickly more. This woman has, lets call them, issues, and his infatuation with her leads him into involvement with the underbelly of the city.

The story is simple and the reader can easily see what's coming ahead. Smith writes well, but his protagonist is obsessed with sex, seeing women's undergarments through their clothing, the effect of air-conditioning on female anatomy, etc etc. This constant stream of lingerie sighting is tiresome and after the first couple of times, unnecessary. We don't need it every time the man sits in a cafe or wanders down the college hallway. I enjoyed the unfolding of the relationship, but Justin seems unable to see what is staring the rest of us in the face. Presumably, this is where the title comes from.

A quick, unsophisticated read. Not for the (sexually) faint of heart.

Borrow it from the library if you think it would appeal. Not a buy.

[Fit_girl_ · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing was very good....great to read a serious Canadian writer. I think the plot was a bit strange in this book...not quite sure what Russell Smith was trying to say with this book. But, it was entertaining to say he least.

[Julielenore · Rating 2 out of 5]

The sex parts were pretty steamy, but not steamy enough to make me keep reading. I gave up after 4 or 5 chapters.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sexy, fast paced. Characters were not likable and the ending disappointed.

[Elise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Justin, a loser, gets out of his shell and straightens his life thanks to "dating" and then not dating anymore Jenna, a f*cked-up 20 war-old stripper.

[Tania · Rating 1 out of 5]

The plot is a knock-off of Tom Sharpe's Wilt, but Sharpe is at least witty and funny, which this book is not.

[Rlabbe 2748 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to keep reminding myself that the main dude was a 30 something year old man and not a 17 year old kid. Enough said.

[Kristy Fletcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

was okay, story a little "been there already" end was dissapointing.

[julianna · Rating 2 out of 5]

i mean i sort of finished the book.

[Pearl Stadelman · Rating 4 out of 5]

good! a bit over the top but I was entertained.