Is it fair to judge a book by its narrator? If I despise a character (especially a narrator) so much as to lose total interest in what they are saying, is it fair to hate the book itself? Humbert Humbert is certainly despicable, Raskolnikov not above reproach, and yet those books enraptured me and held me skillfully in their presence years after first cracking open their covers. Perhaps the difference is simply that Dostoevsky and Nabokov did not try to make you like their creations. Hillary Thayer Hamann tries desperately to make you first identify and then empathize with her heroine Eveline Aster Auerbach in Anthropology of an American Girl. Yet, I strangely ended the book feeling as if I had suffered through the drunken ruminations of one of my heartsick girlfriends – conversations that are inevitably both necessary and tedious.
Books about romantic entanglements make up a great portion of our literature. In general, I hate them. A love story is always welcome and generally fun, but a meditation on the ins and outs of a relationship, especially their deterioration, strikes me as ridiculous. Rarely, when the book is solely on this topic, do I find myself engaged or even entertained. Perhaps my own relationship is too stable and loving for me to appreciate books about the lengths people will go to hurt themselves and others via “love.”
Anthropology of an American Girl focuses on the three relationships of Eveline. Set in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, it follows Eveline from her high school romance with Jack to her whirlwind love with Harrison Rourke to her abusive relationship with Mark and back again. Throughout, we are allowed to hear the long-winded philosophies and misconceptions of this poor, abandoned girl.
Like so many characters, Eveline has the innate ability to just KNOW things. As if there is no thought to emotions or no agenda. When Rourke appears as a guest director at her high school, Eveline just KNOWS that he is THE ONE. Though throughout the course of the book they barely converse, they have a “feral” attachment to one another, each painfully positive that THIS IS IT. The sex is clearly fantastic. Unfortunately for the book to reach 600 pages, they must abandon each other to their separate fates and ache longingly whilst melodramatically denying themselves happiness and thereby physically weakening – always an easy contrivance to illustrate manic longing.
If I sound sarcastic, I am. Why in 2010 does a book like this have such a cult following? Do we still believe that a girl’s life is marked and progressed only by her relationships? I believe in true love, but I do not subscribe to the notion that all else stops to entertain it. Evie is described as both a remarkable painter and writer, but she barely survives school because of the heartache she feels for Rourke.
Do we also still believe that we can assign an identity to an American? Or, an American girl? On the last page, Hamann writes in Evie’s voice, “I am an American girl. I stand with my feet firm on the soil of a nation.” What does that even mean? While trying for these overarching universal themes of identity and place, Hamann merely writes vague and silly statements disguised as philosophy. What these have to do with the melodramatic relationships described in the book is beyond me. Perhaps Hamann is seeking to demonstrate the universality of American women causing themselves to be in pain over a man. Yet I find that women who prove their worth without a man are far more demonstrative of the freedoms that American women can enjoy.
Perhaps my life has been too easy. Perhaps a little drama really juices up the sex. Perhaps a life without a problematic search for love is too easy or too pure. But I value my stability and perhaps even my ignorance as a result. Anthropology of an American Girl is tragically universal – too many people have proved this true. I resentfully understand that Evie’s voice will be pure and appropriately angst-filled to many American Girls. This is why I resent it.
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