I don't love those reviews that declare “required reading” yet every once in a while, a book comes along that feels so definitive, so absolutely necessary, that you not only want to tell everyone to go read it right now, but you find yourself wanting to go back in time and tell your younger self that one day you will get to read something that will make your life make sense. Girlhood is one of the most intimate and revealing books I have ever read. Melissa Febos writes like her hand is on fire.

Very very good, especially as a companion to the earlier Abandon Me.

"I would have liked the movie immeasurably better if, instead of being about a beautiful, smart virgin who acquired an unearned reputation and then cleared her name and bagged the super-nice boyfriend, it was a movie about a girl who actually had extremely hot sex with her queer best friend and then fcked a bunch nerds for Home Depot gift cards and was still presented as a sympathetic protagonist."If you havent read Abandon Me by Melissa Febos, it is one of my all time favorite memoirs. Ever. I

Have you ever loved and connected with a book so much that you kind of had a conversation with it? Because I did with Melissa Febos’ Girlhood. From the forward I was in love with the way she could distill emotions and experiences into these incredible sentences that so perfectly evoke and give voice to things in ways I’ve never seen before but that had me nodding with recognition. So I began by highlighting these sentences and pulling the best ones (and oh, I have so many!) over to the Notes app...

For the first quarter, I felt like I was paddling upstream against the oblique language and tone shifts. The balance of the academic, the anecdotal, and the poetic was off in the first few essays, but by the midpoint with the illuminating essay on stalking and voyeurism the writing improved or I finally clicked into its groove due to the more interesting subject matter. The remaining essays about consent and addiction were just as strong and kept me eager to return to the book.Since the essays a...

GIRLHOOD is the book I waited for my entire life, words with which to articulate the unnamed perils of being female, being girl, the invisible social structures that altered my life and discolored my personality forever. This book is a reclamation, a victory, a triumph. Febos reclaims the girl lost to us all by finding language for the ways we are negated, disowned, distorted, used, and abused as well as the ways we unwittingly contribute to our own repression. I want every human to read this bo...

This is a collection of memoir/commentary essays about reaching physical/sexual maturity as a USAmerican female. It is chilling and terrifying. (I kept thinking that if Liz Phair hadn’t already used the title Horror Stories for her memoir, it would be the perfect title for this book.) Melissa’s experiences and reactions are deeply personal, but also universal. And I say that as someone whose life has been very different from hers — and yet so much of it has been similar. Melissa reached puberty

Review to come but in the meantime- pre-order this book ASAP!

4.25 rounded downI did not enjoy Melissa Febos' first book, Whip Smart. I picked this one up reluctantly, but with hope, and WHOA am I glad that I did. This is a fantastic book of essays/stories about growing up with a female body in a patriarchal culture. One of the stories that the author tells is about going to a cuddle party, where boundaries are encouraged, consent is required (and taught in the group circle at the beginning), and there are specific prohibitions on sexual touch. At the part...

Library -overdrive -ebookMelissa Febos examines the culture girls grow up in - dark adolescent years ….with personal stories- (eight essays),… examining girls changing bodies-….compelling thoughts about beauty, tenderness, strength, prejudice……..the burdens of beauty emphasis, abuse (subtle and obvious), the forever mixed feelings about sexuality….how the word ‘slut’ carries a dark cast over women…how women have been made to feel like subservient inferior beast.A valuable book for mother’s and d...

When you love the book but the rating doesn't suffice - Anyways, I would give this book 4.5 stars, and there's a possibility that I'll wake up in the middle of the night and change it to 5. I loved this book. Reading Girlhood felt like lying in a pool and surrendering yourself to every single one of your your feelings, your memories, your body. Each essay is different from the last, but every essay is about what it means to be a girl and how girlhood informs whoever we are today. Especially when...

The memoir I’ve been waiting for! It’s smart but approachable, pulse raising but soothing, tough but warm. I felt a lot of kinship through the pages, I expect many people will. Caught myself nodding along as I was reading.

A gorgeously written, perfectly calibrated investigation into the traps, paths, and challenges of being female in this world. It's a stunner of a book.

Every woman should read this book. Girlhood is a collection of seven essays that focus on the period between adolescence and womanhood, a time when women initially reap the consequences of the ways that society and the patriarchy have conditioned us to cater to the needs and desires of men, while losing ourselves in the process. Melissa Febos uses some of the smartest and most insightful metaphors I’ve encountered as well as personal anecdotes to relay her messages. The topics covered by the res...

Girlhood by Melissa Febos, a memoir and a collection of essays which focus on womenhood. The book is a wise and brilliant guide to transforming the self and our society.In this powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them.We see Melissa Febos, noting down her journey from a teenager into a adult woman. The book is very raw, authentic and bold. The book covers topic

These essays were a bit uneven for me, but when they were good they were very, very good. Contained many truths that I might have thought I knew but definitely needed to hear again.

I need to hear this on audio. It's excellent, but I'd like to hear the author read it. I'm reshelving this one until the audio becomes available on Hoopla or Overdrive.

Really loved this smart, insightful essay collection. I’ve taught “Intrusions,” which is included, since it came out, and the rest of the book lives up to it, forming a cohesive whole.

Maybe I’m not in the right mood for this, I wanted to enjoy it, but I’m just not digging the writing and 50 pages in I’m not understanding why I’m reading this. The writing style feels hard to follow or feel engaged with. Maybe it’s just me.

It always annoys me when I read a review of a memoir and people complain because it is too self-involved. It's a memoir, it is by definition a book that involves the excavation and display of oneself. All that said, though this both is and is not a memoir, I am about to say something similar, but in my defense I will explain why this was an issue for me. Febos is smart, a superb writer, and has interesting observations about how women are socialized to expect/allow unwanted attention/scrutiny/co...