Undiscovered Gyrl
The novel that inspired the movie ASK ME ANYTHING
-
-
4.4 • 59 Ratings
-
-
- $4.99
-
- $4.99
Publisher Description
Beautiful, wild, funny, and lost, Katie Kampenfelt is taking a year off before college to find her passion. Ambitious in her own way, Katie intends to do more than just smoke weed with her boyfriend, Rory, and work at the bookstore. She plans to seduce Dan, a thirty-two-year-old film professor.
Katie chronicles her adventures in an anonymous blog, telling strangers her innermost desires, shames, and thrills. But when Dan stops taking her calls, when her alcoholic father suffers a terrible fall, and when she finds herself drawn into a dangerous new relationship, Katie's fearless narrative begins to crack, and dark pieces of her past emerge.
Sexually frank, often heartbreaking, and bursting with devilish humor, Undiscovered Gyrl is an extraordinarily accomplished novel of identity, voyeurism, and deceit.
"Imagine an 18-year-old Lolita, updated for the 21st century, blogging her own provocative adventures. By turns charming and crude, disturbingly reckless and achingly tender, Undiscovered Gyrl seduces you into her downy arms, locks her long legs around your waist, and doesn't let go." — Rachel Resnick, author of Love Junkie
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Written as a blog, this debut novel stars Katie Kampenfelt, who types away at her very own Internet reality show. A sassy suburbanite teenager who defers college for a year, Katie takes a job as a nanny for a wealthy family and chronicles her day-to-day life online in the time of Netflix, Barack Obama and Internet lingo. The divulging blog entries start in October 2007 and end in May 2008, instantly gaining popularity as Katie confesses her promiscuous behavior and charts her uncensored thoughts and emotions. Her audience provides constant feedback, both supportive and critical. She notes that only on the Internet can one be both lonely and popular simultaneously, which is a comment on our culture and being 17. When Katie's admittedly superficial arrogance is under control, she is insightful and hilarious, exposing her fears and insecurities. Name and event changes in order to keep the blog's anonymity are disappointing, a fiction within fiction, and raises the question, what is truth? On the Internet, who is really anonymous? Perhaps our dear Katie wasn't such an undiscovered gyrl after all. Burnett's novel is intriguing, but seems at times contrived.
Customer Reviews
Who Would Want to Hurt My Daughter?
I can’t lie, I didn’t take the book too seriously when I picked it up. I found the blog narrative a little annoying, and found Katie to be shallow and narcissistic. Upon finishing it, however, I realized the author had made me contemplate a whole host of complex ideas. In a lot of ways, it felt like reading Lolita from Dolores’ perspective rather than Humbert’s. You understand her need to be loved and see the vultures moving in to pick at what they can from her. The themes raised take on a whole new life as you consider the question of: what would I do if this were my daughter? Why is the world so hungry to take advantage of youth? How can a young woman explore her autonomy safely? These are tough questions any parent would struggle to answer when raising a daughter, and this book grapples with these questions while offering a narrative voice that is unafraid to dive into the gritty nature of misspent youth.
I’ll be thinking about the themes presented for a long time. The book is far from perfect, and the stylistic choice to write it as a blog seems unsophisticated at times, but at the end of the day Allison Burnett accomplished something truly incredible and relevant. The mother of Katie, while contemplating her daughters emotional turmoil, asks herself a poignant question: who would want to hurt my daughter? Her answer sums up the theme of the book: almost anyone.
Heartbreaking & Hopeful
This novel made me feel 18 all over again.
Very good
Honestly I thought I would get bored after the first,chapters but I ended up finishing it that night can't wait for a movie to come out. Loved it I bought several copy's for my friends. Jess blacks .