A Review of Notes to Boys & Why I Can’t be Friends With its Author

I could never be real-life friends with Pam Ribon, because my body just couldn’t take it.

http://pamie.com/

In recent days, thanks once again to Julia’s sweet hook ups,  I have had the true pleasure of communicating with this accomplished author and all around brilliant woman via email and Twitter. Every single conversation has left me laughing until my ribs hurt and/or crying hot, flowing, cleansing tears. And I’m not even ovulating this week. She is so funny! She also is truthful and insightful and a powerful writer. We had terrifyingly similar coming-of-age experiences in the late eighties, early nineties. We both even wrote prolifically all through those years  (someone once aptly called me a fire hazard thanks to my growing sea of paper). The difference is, she has shared those writings with the world. And boy am I ever so grateful she did.

Her latest book, Notes to Boys, is a memoir-style collection of all kinds of interesting things that Little Pam (as she comes to refer to her teen self) wrote over the years. In the book, adult Ribon converses with Little Pam and sort of provides captions to the readers about context and meaning. Sometimes it’s sympathetic and affirming; more often it feels like a good-natured shoulder-shaking like a snap out of it, man! moment between Bones and Captain Kirk. So as the reader you are given the experience of hearing two voices from one woman, and it is pretty amazing. I definitely felt notes of staying character as well as a spectrum of evolution and changing maturity between the two versions of her. (Side note…  As a mother of two teenaged ladies myself, this experience alone made it worth reading.)

Honestly, Notes to Boys is the one of funniest things I have ever read as well as one of the most poignant. Ribon addresses several pivotal moments in a girl’s adolescent life. She delves gently into trauma and parental relationships, too; but mostly she just bares her soul with enormous doses of humor and self-deprecation that just leave you belly laughing and cringing with every page. Long, excavating love letters to boys and even longer, ill-informed but passionate letters to society at large, all trying to express the depth of one teenaged girl’s tortured,  word-loving soul… These are the letters she shares.

You know how horror movies are scarier when you know they are based on true stories? Well, this commentary on being a teen girl in the nineties is funnier and more terrible because as you read, you know it is all true. It’s a beautiful, warm crazy-quilt of confession and retrospection. You will not regret wrapping yourself up in this quilt. Then you will hide beneath it because you recognize so much of your younger self.

Do you need a little litmus test to see if this book is for you? Please explore the following list. If any of these feels even vaguely familiar to you, then the answer is yes. A resounding yes.

• The Doors, first the movie then its soundtrack, informed your sense of adulthood and taste in music. (I mean, maybe it is normal to set rooms on fire for true love…)
• Or, you are at least disappointed with how Val Kilmer looks twenty years later.
• You ever in your life actively collected Johnny Depp posters.
• You mistook every little hormone-drenched crush for true love, the dangerous kind.
• You spent more time free writing than doing homework, mostly because the homework was too easy and you felt like what you had to say was far more important. (Don’t worry; it was.)
• And sometimes your read those writings aloud to yourself.
• You got in trouble with your parents for reading Judy Blume but not Stephen King.
• Sylvia Plath seemed like a good role model at the time.
• And Christian Slater seemed like a true philosopher there for a while, while John Cusack from Say Anything could have made you do anything.
• In high school you had a penchant for the dramatic but couldn’t admit that at the time. You fancied yourself quite a serious person.
• You secretly admired and perhaps envied the cheerleader set, wishing to be one of them, but once again your writing was just so important!
• Drakkar Noir. End of story.

I had so much weeping, nodding, giggling fun reading Notes to Boys. I plan to get copies of it in the hands of my best laugh-out-loud sisters and girlfriends, too. But I won’t pursue a friendship with Pam Ribon, even though we have every single important thing in common.  Because it would be flat-out exhausting, all the Depeche Mode and Pearl Jam sing alongs, all the soapbox protests, all the cry-laughing. Too much.

Instead, will you please check back in later this week for an interview with Pam? She was kind enough to indulge me in a luscious conversation, and I would love for you to hear more. Then order her book or snag it at your favorite local book seller! You will love it.

Can’t Buy What I Want because Its Free…

~Eddie Vedder

XOXOXOXO