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A moving, witty, and intelligent memoir of one woman's quest to find the answers to life's biggest questions
Harper
August 2009
On Sale: August 1, 2009
Featuring: Charlene Bauer
288 pages
ISBN: 0060840544
EAN: 9780060840549
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
Raised in evangelical churches that preached apocalypse now,
Carlene Bauer grows up happy to oblige the God who presides
over her New Jersey girlhood. But in high school and
college, her intellectual and spiritual horizons widen, and
she becomes skeptical of the judgmental God she's been
given. Still, she finds it hard to let go of the ideals
she's been raised with, and to rebel as she knows she
should. She loves rock and roll, but politely declines
offers of sex and drugs; she thinks the Bible and the
Norton Anthology of American Literature are equally
authoritative guides to life. Since there are no churches
worshipping the Jesus Paul Westerberg sang about in "Can't
Hardly Wait," and no tidy categories for those who are
neither riot grrrls nor altar girls, she hovers between a
hunger for the world and a suspicion of it. In her
twenties, however, determined to make up for lost time,
Bauer undertakes a belated and often comic coming-of-age in
New York City. Between late blooming at parties and staying
late at work, it seems that she might become as bold as
she'd hoped to be—even if the late blooming is a little more
hapless than highly erotic. And yet the city and its
pleasures do not distract her from another hope: that she
might learn how to have a faith that she can truly call her
own. Enter the Catholic Church, and a conversion. But then
she falls in love, and loses her religion—which leaves her
wondering just what it means to be good. Sharply
written, hilarious, and touching, Not That Kind of
Girl is the story of one young woman's efforts to define
worldliness, ambition, and love on her own terms—while
believing in, among other things, The Smiths, Virginia
Woolf, and the transformative power of New York City. Fellow
restless seekers will find solace in Bauer's struggle to
create meaning in the face of overwhelming doubt, and fall
in love with the highly original voice at the center of this
unforgettable debut.
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