Author: Lena Dunham
Rating: 2/5
In her seriously breathtakingly honest autobiography, Lena Dunham recounts her experiences through a collection of essays (which don’t really follow the conventions of an essay but whatever). These are stories about friendship, body image, family and being a proud woman. Essentially. There’s a lot of bed sharing too but I think I’m going to glaze over that.
Spoilers ahead. (Well, not really but it’s tradition 🙂 )
Since Not That Kind of Girl is a work of non-fiction, this review will be a general review (rather than focusing on plot and pacing, characters, and writing style).
I really wanted to like this book. Dunham made it so hard though. I picked up this book expecting to read funny stories about overcoming obstacles such as insecurity, life in the film industry (as a woman) etc. Imagine my surprise when the first section—not chapter, section—turned out to be about sharing beds. In some cases, not even doing it.
I sort of skimmed over that. I was really surprised, and frankly, creeped out, to know that Dunham had known so much about the reproductive system and topics related to that when she was in third grade. I didn’t know all those things until LAST YEAR. Gosh. I guess some people just want to grow up as soon as possible.
The only chapter I sort of enjoyed was the one about dieting. It was something I could relate to. But that chapter was not as great as I had hoped. She didn’t really give any insight as to what she learnt from all her “dieting”.
For a book with the sort of tagline that actually says it’ll be talking about life lessons, Not That Kind of Girl didn’t really do a good job of that.
I know this book has been getting a lot of hate on Goodreads. Some of the reviews, though hilarious, are quite brusque and harsh.
I think it was brave of Dunham to share her story (without any filters). So although I didn’t enjoy this book, Dunham is certainly gutsy.
Earnestly Eccentric 