Anything Boys Can Do

ANYTHING BOYS CAN DO by Angie Abdou - Anything Boys Can Do is a collection of twelve short stories in which young women question traditional limitations, including monogamy. The women protagonists, though not always ideals that we would aspire to, are real, smart, and funny. Abdou avoids romanticizing heterosexual love and instead maintains a hilariously unromantic and refreshingly bitter tone throughout all of her characters' sexploits. She manages to discuss female sexuality without using derogatory terms such as tart, slut, whore. Her characters are the liberated women of a post-feminist age. But Abdou does not idealize these women or the successes of feminism either -- her female characters are weak at times, petty at others, and they often depend upon men for validation. Above all else, Abdou's writing is real and honest. Anything Boys Can Do stands far above your usual chick-lit -- it's an enjoyable, contemporary, and hip read ... but one which also makes you think. In that way, Anything Boys Can Do straddles the divide between chick-lit and serious literature.