The Girls from Ames
Book Review by Nicole Hanratty
The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship by Jeffrey Zaslow (Non-Fiction)
Cancel all of your plans for twenty-four hours after you pick up this book because once you begin reading it, you will not be able to put it down.
Any woman who has ever had a lifelong friendship that has seen dark unenviable hours, bouts of inane laughter, profound sadness, and monumental happiness will relate to this tear-jerking powerful story of the extraordinary friendship of eleven average women living normal lives that spans four decades.
At times funny, it is an honest look at dynamics that transpire in female relationships, how cliques are perceived from both the inside and out. Jeffrey Zaslow, (regardless of being a man), captures the ebb and flow of how girlfriends drift in and out of closeness without ever losing their sense of sisterhood flawlessly. As these eleven friends recount their memories and lives in detail, the author's presence is forgotten. Their old letters and journals recreate their journey into adulthood and take us back to their innocent youth.
Within only a few chapters, you are hanging onto the wisdom offered by Marilyn's father, whom all the girls loved (and you now love too), desperately sad at the losses they suffer, understanding of how the friends rely upon one another all in different ways for various reasons, listening to Hall and Oates and singing "Kiss on My List" with them, helping them write letters, joining in their girl-talk, moving forward with them and smiling because their inspirational friendship lives on.
Faster than you can read the last line, you'll be dialing your own girlfriends thanking them for their friendship, letting them know what a profound impact they have on your life, and telling them, there is a book they have to read.
An excerpt from the inside cover:
“The Girls from Ames is a testament to the deep bonds of women as they experience life's joys and challenges--and the power of friendship to triumph over heartbreak and unexpected tragedy. ...With both universal insights and deeply personal moments, it is a book that every woman will relate to and be inspired by."
An excerpt from the book:
"The night they graduated from high school, the girls gathered for a sleepover party at Cathy's house. Her mom had ordered a cake from the local supermarket's bakery, and the frosting on it was supposed to read 'Congratulations S Sisters!' The 'S,' of course, was an inside joke, because kids in school called them 'The Shit Sisters.' Cathy's dad picked up the cake, brought it home, opened the box, and no one could believe what was inside. Someone at the supermarket bakery had written 'Shit Sisters Suck!' in large letters on the cake. Even worse, all over the cake were giant gobs of brown frosting."
Available for purchase online here.
Sign up to become a LOARS Subscriber
