Why I picked up this book:

OMG… this book! All right, so I met Ms. Lara several months back when she was recommended to me as a Winterviewee. I may have never looked twice at her book as memoir is not really my thing, but I adore Lara. The more I kept seeing blurbs of her book everywhere, the more I wanted to read it. I was so lucky to get an ARC off NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This review may contain spoilers.

Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home
	An honest, unfiltered memoir about a girl with an unconventional family. “The story everyone wants to hear isn’t the story I want to tell.” Lara Lillibridge grew up with two moms—an experience that shaped and scarred her at the same time. Told from the perspective of “Girl,” Lillibridge’s memoir is the no-holds-barred account of childhood in an unconventional household. Personally less concerned with her mother’s sexuality and more with how she fits into a world both disturbed and obsessed with it, Girl finds that, in other people’s eyes, “The most interesting thing about me is not about me at all; it is about my parents.”
It won’t be long before readers realize that “unconventional” barely scratches the surface. In the early years, Girl’s feminist mother reluctantly allows her to play with her favorite Barbies while her stepmother refuses to comfort her when she wakes up from nightmares. She swims naked with her lesbian mother and stepmother in upstate New York. Girl and her brother travel four thousand miles—unaccompanied—to visit their father in rural Alaska, where they sleep in a locked cabin without running water, telephone, or electricity. Raised to be a free spirit by norm-defying parents, Girl has to define her own boundaries as she tries to fit into heteronormative suburban life, all while navigating her mother’s expectations, her stepmother’s mental illness, and her father’s serial divorces. Not wanting to be the poster child for either camp on the issue of same-sex parenting yet unable to escape the facts of her upbringing, Lillibridge bravely tells her own story and offers a unique perspective on what it means to be raised by lesbians. At times humorous and pithy while cringe-worthy and heartbreaking at others, Girlish is a human story that challenges readers to reevaluate their own lives and motivations.

    

What I loved:

First of all… this is a 10-star book! Lara’s voice throughout the narrative is strong and beautiful, but she weaves this tale that is both hilarious and heart-wrenching. I couldn’t tell if I was excited because my family feels sane compared to hers or heart-broken because so much of my family and childhood are just like hers. It’s a strange duality that resonates on a deeper level.

In the opening chapter, the main character’s name is Girl. It took me a moment to get used to this, but as the family and their everyday problems unfolded, using ‘Girl’ as a distancer is actually a stronger take. It becomes a role any reader can slide into and be Girl. They feel her pain, her longing, and her desperate need to escape these weird, volatile instances where the adult voice is screaming no no no! I really liked that no main family member had a name, because bits of this tale are everyone’s family.

So much of the interwoven era bits were spot on. In many ways, I got to relive the feel of my childhood through high school and college while reading this story. It’s a nice trip down nostalgia lane to feel the hot summers and warm breezes and smells coming back. I grew up in the same era as the author, so perhaps that’s why I resonated so strongly with this book.

Areas needing a touch of refinement:

There are several spots in the story where two words are missing the space between, or the hyphen between. Not sure if this is just the ARC copy or in the final version as well, but it could use one final tweak to fix these. There weren’t tons, but enough that they started pulling me out of the story.

Father disappeared from the story about 3/4 of the way through. I would have liked to see a closer for him. Or perhaps their final ‘talk’ was the closer, but it was early enough that it didn’t feel like closure with him.

Overall:

I honestly can’t say enough good things about this book. It was funny. It was heart-breaking. At one point my skin crawled so bad I had to toss the kindle across the couch and walk off the shudders. But these characters are very real. They have occasional nefarious acts but aren’t villains. They have good days and bad, terrible and redeeming qualities. In essence… they’re the same people we grow up with, we bounce to and away from, we have in our families, and they’re just like everyone else. Trying to survive.

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