Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

In an essay collection written by Lena Dunham self-confessional navel-gazing is elevated to a new art form. What other kind of follow- up should we expect from an artist who has made a name for herself by being defiantly naked in her show "Girls," which is written, produced, and directed by under-30 Dunham? I have never seen more than a few clips from "Girls" and her short film, "Tiny Furniture." David Sedaris, one of my favorite writers, recommended her book on his book tour. After reading it, I want a refund. This book's tittle is ostensibly an ironic nod to Helen Gurley Brown's "Sex and the Single Girl," and advice manifesto from Cosmo's editor, which Dunham mentions as being an oddly inspiring read when she picked up a copy in a secondhand store. Dunham's essays begin and end with sex. in the middle there is sex, and then sprinkled generously with more sex throughout. Sex, and heartbreak, and love, and falling for the wrong guy, and breaking up with the wrong guy, and getting dumped by the wrong guy you thought was Mr. Right is something, granted, that most women will relate to. But Dunham seems to wallow in "learning experiences" of the sexual variety with undue delight, and every good, bad, and awful detail of assignations with commentary follows. Bad sex is bad enough. But rehashing it and giving it a second life is just...eewww. The content of these essays do not make a book, and it should come with a bar of soap because you will feel dirty after reading it. Throw in the ubiquitous "wild college days" stories, losing her virginity, sexual self-exploration as a 3rd grader, a creepy fifth grade teacher, an alleged rape, the multiple therapists she has seen, contents of her purse, a treatise on her summer camp experiences, her diagnosis of obsessive compulsive disorder, trips to the gynecologist, and an excruciatingly self-absorbed food diary/nutritionist log...I actually felt ill and wondered why I finished the book. The best thing Dunham's parents could have done was send her to a third-world county as a peace corps volunteer so she could just focus on something other than herself, or perhaps made her clean her room, cook meals, or do yard work at some point in her life. This book is a dirge of despair and a paean to self-aggrandizing megalomania. Sadly, Dunham's writing can at times be engaging, winsome, and has nuggets of insight that is intriguing. In fact, her conclusions and commentary regarding her relationship with a particular dirtball named Joaquin should be bronzed and placed in every girl's boudoir by the age of 13. But, that cannot redeem the whole idea of the book. More of Dunham's heart and less shock value is what this book needs. There is a reason our diaries are not published and many are burned. No one wants to know the unedited contents of another's brain, because it becomes schizophrenic. Some chapters of our lives are simply unpalatable. Overall, I just found it an odd, rambling, disjointed, poorly organized rant screeching about gender equality and feminism from an incredibly privileged woman whose New York art world parents most likely spent 200K on her K-12 and bachelor's degree alone. If she is as chronically insecure and "woe is me" as she presents, how has she created a brand and an empire by filming bad sex scenes and her own nudity? My take is that Dunham is crazy like a fox, and she's laughing all the way to the bank. That's one heck of a performance piece, and we, the consumers of her work, are the suckers who bought into her act in our age of reality television and self-confession. .