Boys and Girls Like You and Me

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The new book of tremendously relatable short stories by award-winning author, Aryn Kyle, “Boys and Girls Like You and Me” is a testament to the sometimes chaotic lives of young girls,angsty female teens and women who've been broken by decades of turmoil. We've all been there- rebelled against the people we love, made questionable decisions in terms of boyfriends and sex and indulged in just a little TOO much fun our first semester of college. Kyle's unsettling collection of works more deeply describes the things most women have thought or felt at one time or another. Feeling lost, thinking you're never good enough and hoping you won't spend the rest of your life alone and unhappy are just a few of the common issues displayed through “Boys and Girls”. The book is able to make even the most disturbing, dishonest and troubling of situations ones we can all grasp, as she gives all of her characters quirky and likeable personalities, despite their imperfections.

You may not have been deserted by your mother at a young age, lost your virginity to your high school drama teacher and probably haven't “misplaced” your niece and nephew in the midst of a sexual encounter with a complete stranger-one dressed as a pirate none the less. But for some reason you feel for the protagonists because even if you haven't had an affair or self-mutilated, at the core of every story, you can understand the underlying issues and layers of emotional depth that we women harbor.

Dripping in sarcasm and riddled with dark humor, “Boys and Girls”, addresses the insecurities we face in our lives, and yet for even the most tragic of characters, Kyle describes a calming finality among them. That even in the darkest situations there's a brief glimpse of hope, that everything will work itself out somehow. You may have been the outcast, the girl everyone else picked on and ridiculed. Or you may have been part of the bitchy crowd, the one that made other girls' lives hell, for no particular reason at all. There are the broken housewives, betrayed by their spouses, and the “other woman” who's responsible for the affair and downfall of a family. We've all been on one side of the spectrum to some extent and proves that women are a complicated species, and Kyle showcases that beautifully. Our problems seem endless, our emotional worries and concern for our outward appearances sometimes completely consume us. But “Boys and Girls Like You and Me” give us solace in just that- we're all similar, we all experience pain and grief, but also triumph over adversity. We are not alone in the sometimes turbulent realm that is womanhood.
 

(Boys and Girls Like You and Me, Aryn Kyle, Scribner, $24.00, arynkyle.com)