Not That Kind Of Girl.

Books Lena Dunham's memoir is almost the exact opposite to Lauren Graham's.  Anyone wanting to discover how GIRLS is made should look elsewhere.  Few of the other creatives are mentioned with most of the cast not even mentioned in the acknowledgements.  Unlike Graham, Dunham strikingly doesn't seem to want to be defined by her work, which is strange because in providing this intimate investigation into her young life demonstrates how much of it has become material for that work.

As expect, her writing is raw.  Despite her moderately stable childhood, she developed numerous mental health problems which have infested her ever since demonstrating that it's not always unexpected trauma which causes these kinds of problems.  She's quite open about the therapy she's received and medication and how it's effected her perception of the world.  How it's defined her.  These are the chapters I can most relate to.

How much of what happens in here is commonplace or is there a correlation between people who lead complicated, busy lives and creativity?  Perhaps it's that most of her experiences are relatively mundane or common place, but it's her emphatic descriptions which make them kinetic.  Or perhaps it's that because I've had such a monkish existence, anything outside my own social experience is exciting.

Selecting a thematic rather than chronological approach in order to give each of her stories some structure, it's impossible not to play detective in trying to discover how the pieces fit together.  Where do her nine months working in a baby clothes shop fit which is she writes about later in the book fit with her many love affairs, and at what point did production on her film Tiny Furniture begin?  Missing the point, perhaps, but it provides a welcome distraction from some of the darkness.

Dunham reveals herself to be an at times judgemental, hateful person.  In other words, a typical human being.  I didn't laugh as much as the cover text suggests I might, partly because so much of it is from outside my field of reference, which probably the point of reading and probably why men should read more of this kind of biography.  The main takeaway is: how has she found time to do all of this?