The Girls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow Book Review

The Girls from Ames is a new book written by Wall Street Journal Writer Jeffrey Zaslow. The story of the girls came from one of Zaslow's columns about friendship. Zaslow showcases this unusual group of eleven women who became friends as girls. They have continued their friendship to this day in their mid forties. One of the original girls died in an accident at twenty, but the rest of the ten surviving members of the Ames Girls have managed to maintain contact through the decades. Their friendship has weathered college and careers, marriage and divorce, life and death, This is a true story of women and friendship.

This book could have been a fascinating look at women of a specific era and their coming of age in a middle America. Instead it is a bland retelling of a group of friends with nothing really extraordinary about them besides the friendship itself. The Ames Girls, as they still call themselves, grew up in Ames, Iowa, home to the University of Iowa. It was and is the quintessential college town with strong mid western values.

The girls were born in 1963, (some in the same hospital) and they spent their adolescence in the changing world of the seventies, graduating high school in 1981. They entered adulthood at a time when the country was in a Cold War, when there were no cell phones or computers and when parents had a more hands off approach to raising their children. The lives and times of these women could have been a compelling story, sadly this is not the case. It's possible that Zaslow's background as a journalist made the retelling dry and boring. It's also true that being a man, Zaslow might not have been able to get into the heads of the women in a deep way, although in the hands of a better story teller, male of female, this might not be the case.

The women are all nice enough and the book does emphasise their apparent love of each other. There is an easy comfort in their interactions along with a knowing acceptance of flaws and foibles. They have all led fairly mundane lives which in itself can be compelling if told in an interesting way. Zaslow fails on this account and he reports the lives of these ten women instead of telling their story. He also feels compelled to include mind numbing statistics about the importance of having friends on women's health. By the middle of the book I was ready to scream, "Okay I get it! If we have friends we live longer and healthier!"

Zaslow fails to flesh out each woman's character in any meaningful way. They are all interchangeable and it's nearly impossibly to differentiate between them. Karen, Karla, Kelly, Diana, Angela? The poor quality pictures scattered throughout the book with no apparent sequence are of absolutely no help either. I was constantly referring back to the first few pages where pictures of the girls as children are along side their high school senior portraits. A short glib description of each girl sums them up handily as "The doctor's daughter, the free spirit, the beauty." Unfortunately, I still couldn't keep them straight when reading the text.

Of all the girls only two seemed to be more than a sixties era moniker. The first was Karla. She was the first to have a child and seemed the most touched by life. When her first child named Christy was fourteen, she died of cancer. Honestly, Christy was more interesting and had more depth then the Ames girls themselves. Christy was able to chronicle her short life and struggles on her own website and the book quotes her writings verbatim. Christy displayed great wisdom for a young girl. The pain her mother Karla went through was just sort of glossed over. It's apparent it was mind boggling, but we never get a sense of how Karla coped. In fact much of the book brings up issues only to gently gloss over them without any real explanation or depth. It feels as if the were certain topics that were agreed upon in advance not to bring up. So much seems missing from these women's lives.

Which brings us to the other Ames girl who stood out, but not for the greatest reasons; Kelly. Kelly is described as the "free spirit". She is the epitome of the baby boomer generation to which the Ames Girls are part; albeit at the tail end. Kelly encompasses all that the hippie generation embraced. She's self indulgent, rebellious for no apparent reason and puts her own wants and need ahead of others. The author places her on a pedestal as some sort of feminist icon. She is a high school journalism teacher who loves her students and urges them to protest and rebel against authority. She is downright proud she has had an abortion and is fine with announcing it to the other Ames girls. She brags that she has considered having a lesbian affair and she left her husband and lost custody of her children for reasons not revealed in the book, but seem to be along the lines of her inability to grow up. It's as if she must embrace every trend that comes her way to prove her relevance. Why the other women are friends with her is a mystery.

There are other stories in the book that don't really conjure up curiosity. The case of Sheila, one of the original girls that died 'under mysterious circumstances' is a perfect example. Sheila was a twenty-three year old college student in Chicago, when she attended a party with her boyfriend. She had consumed a few drinks, abruptly decided to leave and then accidentally fell off the roof of the building where the party was being held. There was no foul play and it was very obviously a tragic accident. No more no less, yet the girls rehash it as if it was the JFK assassination.

Again, I am being picky only because being very close in age to the girls I was hoping for a more compelling story, one that I could nod my head and say, "Yes, I know that girl". The book is impersonal and superficial, something the Ames girls are not, despite the retelling of their story. Maybe one day the girls themselves will put pen to paper and tell their own rendition of the friendship, no holds barred. This might be the compelling story I'm looking for.