I just finished reading on Monday the book "College Girl" by Patricia Weitz. "College Girl" is a relatively short book, only 326 pages, and I read through it relatively quickly as it only took me two or three sittings to complete. The book is sad and tumultuous, focusing on the senior year of Natalie Bloom. Bloom is finishing up her college years at University of Connecticut, having transferred in from a community college. To say that Bloom is smart is an understatement, if you only focus on her bookish nature. She has no life smarts. Coming from a blue collar, factory working household, Bloom does not fit in with the typical UConn student. As she tries to adjust to UConn life, she gets further and more distant with her own family, whom she has never had a good relationship with.
What disturbed me was how much I had in common with Bloom, maybe not socio-economically, but experiences-wise. I wish that some of the text wasn't so graphic, at times it read like a romance novel, but I am assuming Weitz thought that being so graphic would make you realize how heightened Bloom's senses were to every experience she went through. She went to college a virgin so of course she lost her virginity with the first guy who paid her any attention. He liked her in the beginning, but then things change, and you want to scream at her to MOVE ON, but of course she doesn't for pages and pages. Weitz writes with a lot of adjectives, very descriptive, which helps the reader figure out the season and climate of every scene in the text.
There was a lot I could relate to, which are a bit too personal on here, and some are way too relateable to even fathom seeing them in writing. I found it interesting how this read almost like a memoir, which I liked a lot.
Here is a quote that hit home for me:
"I like you," he'd said.
I recoiled, and Jack saw it.
"What?" he asked, alarmed. "Did I say something wrong?"
My instincts told me to reply, "No, of course not," but I ignored them. "Why," I forced myself to ask, "do you ... 'like' me?"
Instead of saying "I think you're cute," as Patrick had, or some other predictable line that really says nothing at all, he told me I was interesting. That may sound just as glib and pointless, but after Patrick had made me feel about as interesting as a steel-girded doorknob, I was relieved, and what's more, I believed him. He couldn't have cared less if I had read Ulysses or the Hundred Greatest Books Ever Written. He didn't care if I had acceptable bands like Nirvana in my music collection or embarassing ones like Wham! And it wasn't because Jack was a dimwit. He was extremely well-read - his mother was a professor of literature, and he was doing a double major in law and statistics. He was smart. He just didn't make me feel dumb, or uncertain. Ever.
Jack became my boyfriend. My first boyfriend. He was sweet and generous and romantic... but here's my dirty little secret: It was harder to be with him, in some ways, than it had been to be with Patrick. Being with someone who genuinely likes you poses certain challenges for someone uncomfortable with intimacy. I kept expecting him to see me for what I was and come to his senses. I kept expecting my own insecurities to rise up and ruin everything. I was quick to self-depricate and to urge him to do things without me, but he persisted and, slowly, I grew comfortable with him.
Comfortable was foreign, but good.
"College Girl" a novel. By Patricia Weitz. Riverhead Books, published by the Penguin Group: New York, 2008.
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