Anthropology of an American Girl
By Hilary Thayer Hamann
You don’t hear too many fairy tales in the publishing industry these days, but Hilary Thayer Hamann must have one hell of a fairy godmother. Originally self-published in 2003, her debut novel, Anthropology of an American Girl, sold out its original press run of 5,000 copies and became so talked-about that a division of Random House snapped it up for a re-issue. Anthropology follows the ever-drifting Eveline Auerbach as she grows up on Long Island in the ’70s. It begins in high school, the emotional birthplace of many a teenage girl, where Eveline has found her first love, Jack, who is, unsurprisingly, troubled and brilliant. She moves onto amateur wrestler Harrison Rourke, who is not brilliant, but he has the troubled part down pat. They have what appears to be a Romeo and Juliet dynamic, but as far as I could tell, they were the only thing keeping them apart. Throughout the rest of the book, more men fall at Evie’s feet and she tries to lead a normal life as she steps over them. Though she was the narrator, Evie felt like nothing more than a ghost to me, describing not the events that she was taking part in, but the events that were occurring to her. Fellow characters constantly describe her as willful, but, as someone who was once a teenage girl, I can tell you on good authority that Evie was perhaps occasionally a little stubborn and not much more. Hamann is a decent writer, but not good enough to sustain the length of this book, which is borderline epic at nearly 600 pages. She skillfully negotiates situations, but then adds a line that is tantamount to building a cement wall on a road; I almost stopped reading after she described a character’s voice as sounding like “cellophane melting.” The story of Anthropology of an American Girl is a great one, a literary myth that will be whispered in writing groups and passed between hopeful authors. I just wish the story inside the book was as good.