Girls they write songs about
Karlen Bauer
Page 308. Farah, Strauss, Jiro. $ 27.
Evolutionary psychologist and anthropologist Robin Dunbar likes this term Homo Philly — “Same love” — Explain why certain people make friendships. We all know the phenomenon of long-standing companions growing in the same way, but Homophily suggests that quite a few companions are actually the same from the beginning. Related saying: “Birds of feathers flock”.
Two women in Karleen Bauer’s glittering novel “The Girls They Write Songs” define homosexuality.. Charlotte and Rose are brave, reckless, self-critical and stylish. Both are crazy about writing and music. Both stayed in New York in the late 1990s for the same reason. Bauer summarizes one of the great opening lines of his memory these days: “Rose and I moved to New York because we didn’t have a mother.”
These two women are the product of second wave feminism. They are keen to avoid the influence of their mothers they dismiss as front door mats they have been suffering for a long time. For a while it feels great. Rose and Charlotte are free! You are free to work in a music magazine that will fly all the staff to London for the festival. You are free to focus on their career. Feel free to eat liquor, pizza, men and adventure.
Bauer’s novel begins as an ode to alchemy that occurs when two strangers feel that their sensibilities and tastes miraculously match. Who needs a romantic partner when you have a best friend? Who needs a diary when you have a living, breathing receptacle for all opinions, fantasies, fantasies, confessions of guilty, and scraps of gossip rolling in your head?
But readers know that this epic friendship is over. The pessimistic forecast is published on page 1. “We thought that with all our efforts, one day we would be able to stand exactly where we wanted, on time,” said book narrator Charlotte. “But we weren’t selfish or selfless enough to be heroines, and she and I aren’t talking anymore, but she thinks and writes about it makes me happy. we.“
From the beginning, the relationship between Charlotte and Rose has been electrified and polluted by a sense of competition. They are exclusive on their writing agenda. Charlotte has more discipline. Rose has more style. Both are in a painful position of having aptitude, but they are not geniuses. As the title suggests, she may be a girl who is writing songs by others, but she never becomes a songwriter.
For years, they’ve traveled around New York, drinking spiked iced tea at Jones Beach, stalking Lou Reed, and building their identity like a couple of wrens collecting twigs for their nests. I collected it. Then there is a rift.
Initially, this division is mutually incomprehensible. You can feel each woman thinking: We still have the same opinion about sexual freedom, vintage dresses, and the ideal place to sit in a movie theater. So why are we floating apart? Oh, but what has changed is their values. The tempo of the breach reminds us of Hemingway’s famous line about how a person goes bankrupt: gradually and suddenly.
Gradually and suddenly, Rose wants something different from life. She wants financial stability, a vacation in Mexico, brownstone with a shaded backyard, and an excuse not to complete her hired book for her writing. She marries a lawyer she doesn’t love. He diverges in every way from her “art-damaged Rufian’s usual muesli mix.”
For Charlotte, the key to Rose’s bougie turmoil is regression and betrayal. Neither woman denies that their presence in New York, along with the presence of all others in their cohort, had a gentrification effect.But they weren’t supposed to be gentrification themselves. They weren’t supposed to worry about breakfast corners, complex moldings, and polished hardwood floors.
Like black mold, anxiety in the class emerges between two friends overnight. Rather than accusing Rose of breaking her unspoken deal, Charlotte makes a sneaky comment. “Is it me, or do you feel like you’re playing in a giant Barbie Dreamhouse?” One afternoon, Rose signs a drape credit card receipt at a store full of things Charlotte can’t buy. While she’s doing, she asks.
What lasts for 20 years in the novel is not as decisive as farewell. Instead, Bauer explores the subtle topic of how a person’s emotional metabolism slows down over time. The next morning, people in their twenties can easily eat wine and grilled cheese sandwiches without feeling like death. When you reach 40, it becomes difficult to do these things. This also applies to one-night stands, moody explosions, and eternal love mad vows.
Bauer is the author of the previous novel “Francis and Bernard” and the memoir “Not a Girl of That Kind”. Her third book reveals her keen eye for her social details and Laurie Colwin-style ears for dialogue. The novel’s emotional pockets are offset by malicious sources, accurately reflecting how we tend to remember the past.
“Girls They Write Songs About” is a love story about two friends, but it’s also about the cycle of enchantments, disenchantments, and reenchantments that make up life.
