Not That Kind of Girl

I haven't read many memoirs where I felt compelled to underline sentences because they resonated so strongly with my own view of the world. NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL almost could be my story --- a prudish and bookish girl growing up in the '80s and '90s with a passion for evangelical Christianity and an equally passionate love of words. Just like the author Carlene Bauer, "I was sure that when people talked about using our gifts to glorify [God], it meant that God was going to put me to work writing devotional guides for teenage girls." And just like Bauer, I wasn't sure that this was the life I wanted. Bauer did have one thing that I didn't --- a life plan involving majoring in English right out of high school and moving to New York to work as a writer. While I did eventually get my English degree and have now visited New York, this memoir allows me to live vicariously through Bauer and see a life that at the ripe "old" age of 32 I feel I cannot pursue now. And not only can I see this life, I can see it through the eyes of a young girl equally afraid of her own sexuality, equally stuck in the lives of dead authors' romantic heroines, equally replacing underlining in Bibles with underlining in novels that refreshingly offer no one truth, and, ultimately, equally stumbling through life without all the answers. There were moments when Bauer and I took the exact same steps --- the same Christian hang-ups bothered us in the same order, starting with the phrase "How's your walk with the Lord?" and ending with a desperate scramble to find some denomination that let women be feminists and congregants be liberal but ultimately failing in this quest. What Bauer also refreshingly shares with me is a real acceptance of those who have stayed with Christianity, and a hint of envy that they can lead their lives with such blind faith while we are left with the "curse" of unbelief. But Bauer is also not me. Her memoir is filled with literary name dropping that I shamefully admit is not really name dropping but simply a more intense knowledge of the subject she studied. Reading her memoir is like taking a refresher course in English literature --- some of the references you get, and some you don't. But you end the book feeling smarter (or more stupid for not being as smart) than when you first opened it. However, Bauer's aim is not to make her readers feel smart, or stupid. It's to make them feel human and to tell them that this humanness is okay --- for Bauer herself is also refreshingly self-critical. At times during the memoir I was afraid for the author. She would take a turn and I would think, "Oh no, here is where we will differ." But as I continued reading, she always came back to me and embraced my decisions as her own. The exception to this, at least so far in my single life, is to whom she decides to commit. Without ruining an ending, I'll say that it follows in the same vein of the current romantic comedy trend --- overly educated women who have to lea

Bauer's memoir is old-fashioned in the best possible ways: The sentences are carefully considered (often stunning), and unlike so many memoirs these days, the simple and salacious are overlooked in favor of a complicated contemplation that is truer to everyday life. Bauer wasn't raised by crack-addicted circus clowns, she didn't wake up on airplanes in pools of her own blood -- her upbringing was similar in its details to many people who grew up in the '70s and '80s. What's uncommon is not the details of her life, but what she crafts from them. Turning the ordinary into art is not easy, but Bauer has done it. Yes, there is some Tina Fey/Liz Lemon in here, as some reviewers elsewhere have mentioned, but there's also some Mary McCarthy and some Augustine. It's a heady, charming brew. The book doesn't wrap things up in a bow, but by the end there is a lovely sense of moving ahead in life despite uncertainty and contradiction; of staying attentive to the world and its questions, whether or not you think there's a single Answer waiting to be found.

In, "Not that kind of Girl," Carlene Bauer hilariously yet philosophically explores eventual disenchantment with her religious and literary upbringing, in favor of maturing and becoming a real New Yorker. Bauer's memoir is easy to relate to, as Bauer recounts her Church upbringing in south New Jersey, her school transitions leading to a small Catholic college in Baltimore, and her on-going ambition to make it as a writer in the big city. Yet, Bauer soon learns that reality never quite matches the plots of her beloved books, and religious devotion can sometimes weaken her resolve. Innocent and naïve, her memoir re-awakens the teenager in all of us--wanting nothing more than to belong, find that other perfect partner, and survive adversity by drinking it away, going to parties, and feigning contentment. Bauer's real life only begins when she moves to New York City at the ripe old age of 23. Only there, does she learn to drink, party, and fleet from man to man in relationships harboring on the sexual yet curiously--for the most part--remaining platonic. Any new experience is treated as an "experiment," as Bauer appears to be an onlooker but never a participant of her own life. Soon enough, she finds herself unsatisfied with her office job and filled with increasing loneliness as her love life proves virtually non-existent, even as her best friend moves out to live with her boyfriend and female friends discuss their husbands. And yet, in true Hollywood fashion, Bauer's memoir retains the happy ending we all hope for. Her love life and career prospects improve, even as Bauer discusses losing her faith and insecurity about what it is she wants in life. Ultimately, Bauer's journey is both spiritual and revealing, showing not only her life but the workings of a modern society, no longer so puritanical in the age of sexual freedom, decadence, and capitalism.

I love memoirs, especially ones about addiction, my motto being, "the more debauched the better." But Carlene Bauer has written quite a different sort of memoir. Her story is of a good girl who is both equally baffled by and attracted to the misbehaviors of her peers. Not one to go unreflectively forth, Bauer ponders her way through to her 30's. Luckily for us, all of her introspection is written in precise and evocative prose, laced with humor, wit, self-deprecation and honest admissions of pain and humiliation. If you have a functioning brain, if you think about your place in the world, if you've ever felt awkward, disappointed by reality, or wanted more than what made the rest of the people around you happy-you will love this book.

A story about weighing pleasure against goodness, god against sex and boys, modest middle-class values against vaulting ambition, etc. To all the thoughtful girls and once-girls out there, I recommend it wholeheartedly