Title: Boys and Girls Like You and Me
Author: Aryn Kyle
Format: Trade Paper
Publisher: Scribner | Simon & Schuster
Pub Date: 2010; this edition: 2011
Read: Jul 2011
Source: Posman Books, Grand Central Station
Why: mostly I liked the paperback cover
Fulfills Challenge? Yes.
Review/Thoughts:
Simply put there are some good stories in here but even the good ones don’t stay with you for very long. It hasn’t even been a month since I finished the book and I can’t remember a single story save for the first one “Brides” which I read months ago. I had to revisit the book in order to write this review. I did like “Nine” though the ending was devastating. “Femme” was interesting but not really a short story. I appreciated “Sex Scenes from a Bookstore” if only because I worked at a bookstore and know how customers can be real assholes sometimes but the story itself didn’t do a whole lot for me. “Economics” seemed pointless. “Captain’s Club” was all right. “A Lot Like Fun” had its moments. “Company of Strangers” had potential and I liked the ending but not the rest of it. “Take Care” was strange and unsatisfying. For the most part, I liked “Allegiance.” And the eponymous story was quite simply “meh.” When I finished reading the collection, I gave it 3 stars because I guess I thought it was okay overall but the fact that I couldn’t really remember anything makes me question those initial feelings (it also makes me wonder whether I should write a book review immediately when everything is fresh or wait a bit for everything to settle, but that’s for another post).
Unfortunately what I do remember quite clearly from this book is this line: “Tommy stared down at her knees, white and creamy as two pieces of fruit.” I feel bad pulling that line out because Kyle’s writing for the most part is solid, but that sentence rankled and is the one thing I remember as being utterly ridiculous. I get the whole show don’t tell thing. I also get that you can sometimes try too hard to show in a way that isn’t cliche and end up with knees looking white as pieces of fruit (because creamy, white fruits are oh so common…do they look like the inside of a banana? does that qualify as white now? still shaking my head over this one).
Final Verdict: 
I get the white thing. Apples…pears. Creamy is perhaps the wrong word. I could see maybe soft or round or firm or something like that maybe working. Or maybe I’m over thinking it.
The thing is most people would think of apples as red…then green or yellow; pears as green or greenish yellow, even a greenish brown. You don’t really think of fruit colors as their inside color though I assume that’s what she was going for. When I read the line aloud my mom immediately asked “what white fruit?” And the creamy part doesn’t work at all unfortunately. Round or firm definitely would’ve been better.
And I know it’s totally nitpicky and overthink-y on my part as well. I DO NOT DENY THIS.