There's a great scene in the first episode of Girls, Lena Dunham's hit HBO series, where, with her parents about to pull the plug on the financial support they've been giving their daughter since she graduated, Dunham's character, Hannah Horvath, presents them with some of her writing in a plea to prove her artistic capabilities and thus sustain her allowance.
"I think that I may be the voice of my generation," she begins confidently, before quickly reassessing the magnitude of the claim she's making. "Or at least, a voice, of a generation." The irony, of course, is that Dunham herself has become the undisputed voice of her generation. First there was Tiny Furniture, the 2010 feature film she wrote, directed and starred in, then came Girls – Generation Y's answer to Sex and the City – and now Dunham's made good on her alter ego Hannah's literary aspirations by writing Not That Kind of Girl [Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk], a memoir in essay form.
Split into five sections – “Love & Sex”, “Body”, “Friendship”, “Work” and “Big Picture” – Dunham talks candidly about everything, including but not limited to: losing her virginity, being diagnosed with endometriosis, taking off her clothes on screen, her close relationship with her sister, the neuroses that sent her to therapy in the first place and the fears that keep her awake at night today.
There are a few, less-than-satisfactory filler chapters: such as "18 Unlikely Things I've Said Flirtatiously" (some are quite funny in a way that makes them unsuitable for quoting here, though ultimately pointless since they're presented as a simple list with no backstory or explanation – though this, I'm sure, is the point; Dunham is as embarrassingly awkward as the rest of us); "What's in My Bag" (fairly self-explanatory and not hugely interesting); and "10 Reasons I <3 NY" (her take on the obligatory essay about New York that's been any self-respecting writer's duty since Joan Didion wrote Goodbye to All That in 1967).
On the whole, though, the essays make for engaging reading. Sure, they’re the intimate tell-alls we’ve come to expect from a woman who, quite literally, bears all for the camera and then seemingly offers up her soul, too, but they’re also comfortably confessional in that way that only years of therapy can account for. Dunham had her first session at the tender age of 9, which is perhaps how she can recall so much of her childhood so clearly here. As Freud himself knew from the get-go, it’s being in possession of a coherent narrative about one’s life that’s the key, not whether the story you’re telling is true or not.
As if to prove the case in point: "I'm an unreliable narrator," Dunham admits at the beginning of the essay "Barry". "Because I add an invented detail to almost every story I tell about my mother. Because my sister claims every memory we 'share' has been fabricated by me to impress a crowd." These are interesting examples, for, if Dunham plundered the lives of her and her friends in search of material for Girls, it's that of her sister and mother she loots in Not That Kind of Girl, certain chapters reading more like their memoirs than hers. The subject of "Barry", though, is decidedly serious: a sexual encounter that "didn't feel like a choice at all".
Essays such as these made me wish I had a teenage daughter into whose hands I could press the book as someone who could genuinely benefit from Dunham’s pearls of wisdom.
As much as I was entertained by Dunham’s (for the most part) bright and breezy style, not to mention charmed by her warts-and-all oversharing, there’s not much to “learn” in Not That Kind of Girl that the likes of Nora Ephron (Dunham’s mentor and I’m assuming the “Nora” to whom the book is dedicated) or even Caitlin Moran haven’t already taught us. Not to mention what those of us who’ve lived through the mistakes of our own 20s have taught ourselves through the process of trial and error.
That said, I’m looking forward to the next “dispatches from the front lines” in the struggle of “having it all”. I want to read what Dunham is writing about in her 30s, 40s, 50s, etc, but most of all, her 80s, the decade in which she promises to publish her memoir that will name and shame all the misogynists she’s (already) had to deal with in Hollywood.
Lucy Scholes is a freelance journalist who lives in London.
thereview@thenational.ae
