Cover of Girl Walks into a Bar: A Memoir

Girl Walks into a Bar: A Memoir

From the glittering skyscrapers of Manhattan's media elite to the slacker haven of a fashionably low-rent L.A. bar, Strawberry Saroyan traces her journey from girl- to womanhood, as well as from fantasy to reality. A powerful and profoundly postmodern coming-of-age story, with a voice reminiscent of Liz Phair's one moment and Mary McCarthy's the next, Girl Walks into a Barexplores Saroyan's struggle not only with who she is and who she wants to be but also with who she is in the context of what she's supposed to embody: the iconic, media-promulgated "girl," a twenty-first-century version of Audrey Hepburn standing outside Tiffany's looking at diamonds.

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Girl Walks into a Bartakes a handful of the most striking and formative episodes of Saroyan's life and brings them to the page as a filmmaker might, zooming in on the crucial "scenes": Saroyan losing her virginity, starting her own riot-grrrly magazine, falling in dysfunctional love. Yet all the while she's trailed by that other black-clad girl, the Platonic ideal of so many modern young women's fantasies. Will the two ever meet? That question lies at the heart of Saroyan's genre-bending memoir. Girl Walks into a Barpromises to be one of the most memorable debuts of the year.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 208 pages

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