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The Dirty Girls Social Club: A Novel, by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
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Alisa Valdés-Rodríguez's vibrant, can't-put-it-down novel of six friends--each one an unforgettable Latina woman in her late '20s--and the complications and triumphs in their lives
Inseparable since their days at Boston University almost ten years before, six friends form the Dirty Girls Social Club, a mutual support and (mostly) admiration society that no matter what happens to each of them (and a lot does), meets regularly to dish, dine and compare notes on the bumpy course of life and love.
Las sucias are:
--Lauren, the resident "caliente" columnist for the local paper, which advertises her work with the line "her casa is su casa, Boston," but whose own home life has recently involved hiding in her boyfriend's closet to catch him in the act
--Sara, the perfect wife and mother who always knew exactly the life she wanted and got it, right down to the McMansion in the suburbs and two boisterious boys, but who is paying a hefty price
--Amber, the most idealistic and artistic member of the club, who was raised a valley girl without a word of Spanish and whose increasing attachment to her Mexica roots coincides with a major record label's interest in her rock 'n' roll
--Elizabeth, the stunning black Latina whose high profile job as a morning television anchor conflicts with her intensely private personal life, which would explain why the dates the other dirty girls set her up on never work out
--Rebecca, intense and highly controlled, who flawlessly runs Ella, the magazine she created for Latinas, but who can't explain why she didn't understand the man she married and now doesn't even share a room with; and
--Usnavys, irrepressible and larger than life, whose agenda to land the kind of man who can keep her in Manolo Blahniks and platanos almost prevents her seeing true love when it lands in her lap.
There's a lot of catching up to do.
- Sales Rank: #44452 in Books
- Brand: St. Martin's Griffin
- Published on: 2004-05-13
- Released on: 2004-05-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.28" h x .90" w x 5.57" l, .80 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
- Great product!
Amazon.com Review
The Dirty Girls Social Club closely resembles Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale: a handful of young women seek real love and job satisfaction. Unlike McMillan, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez has completely thrown out any literary pretensions whatsoever, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Dirty Girls is a fun, easy, ultimately charming read, not least because the girls themselves are so appealing. Six Latina women become fast friends at Boston University and thereafter meet as a group every few months. Now in their late twenties, they're each on the cusp of the life they want. The novel is narrated in turn by each woman. Feisty Lauren has a column at the Boston Globe, but can't help falling for losers; ghetto-elegant Usnavys is trying to find a man to match her own earning power and expensive tastes; uptight Rebecca is a successful magazine publisher and an unsuccessful wife; beautiful TV anchor Elizabeth has a secret; Sara leads a Martha-Stewart-perfect life as a homemaker; and Amber is a hopeful rock musician in L.A.
The novel works because Valdes-Rodriguez has compassion for her characters; each is faulted, but none is culpable. She also has an eye for the telling detail, as when Rebecca tries to befriend her white husband's stuffy family: "His sister took step classes with me and we shopped for clothes together on Newbury Street and went to the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum one afternoon with Au Bon Pain sandwiches in our handbags." Something about those sandwiches makes the whole enterprise seem more poignant. On the down side, Valdes-Rodriguez is so eager to make things work out for her ladies, her writing sometimes beggars belief. Men actually say things like "Swear to me you're happily married, and I'll stop pursuing you." Yes, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is, in fact, the Latina Terry McMillan. That is, if McMillan were a slighty guiltier pleasure. --Claire Dederer
From Publishers Weekly
Valdes-Rodriguez's debut novel delivers on the promise of its sexy title, offering six lively, irreverent characters: the sucias ("dirty girls" in Spanish), who have been friends since college and get together twice a year to catch up. The book opens at just such a meeting, six years after they've graduated from Boston University, and takes us through an eventful year in their late 20-something lives. This diverse group of women defies stereotypes. There's reserved, conservative Rebecca, founder and editor of a magazine for Latina women, whose marriage to a preppy, Marxist theory-spouting academic is on the rocks; Sara, a full-time mom in Brookline, from a rich Cuban-Jewish family and married to an abusive husband; Usnavys, ambitious and entertainingly materialistic, who's an executive with United Way; Amber, a struggling singer and guitarist; Elizabeth, host of a Boston morning TV show and a born-again Christian; and Lauren, a feisty, hard-drinking newspaper columnist, half Cuban and "half white trash." The book addresses serious questions-prejudice, the difficulty of winning respect from Latino men-but balances them with enough budding (and dying) romances and descriptions of clothing and decor to satisfy any chick lit fan. The lively, humorous writing is peppered with Spanglish and attitude (watching Usnavys approach their meeting place, Lauren says, "Look at her. She just slid up to the curb out front in her silver BMW sedan.... She's on her cell phone. Wait, take two: She's on her itsy-bitsy cell phone. It gets smaller every time I see her. Or maybe she gets bigger, I can't tell. Girl loves her food.") This is a fun, irresistible debut.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
In her first novel, Valdes-Rodriquez, a journalist for the Albuquerque Tribune, depicts the lives of six young, upwardly mobile Latinas, best friends since college, who meet twice a year to catch up with each other. They call themselves the sucias ("dirty girls"), as in "Buena Sucia Social Club." Lauren, a tough, outspoken, but painfully insecure newspaper columnist, opens the novel with fierce energy and irreverent humor, introducing readers to her friends: Usnavys, impeccably dressed and status-conscious; Rebecca, the hyper-driven founder of a thriving magazine for Latinas; Amber, a rock musician determined to bring her uniquely politicized music to the masses; Elizabeth, a news anchor who is hiding her lesbianism from the sucias and her colleagues; and Sara, a Sephardic Jewish mother of two whose marriage is not as perfect as it looks. Perhaps because it seems semiautobiographical, Lauren's voice is the most authentic, but Valdes-Rodriguez has given all six women complex, believably flawed personalities. Prepress buzz likening this novel to Terry McMillan's breakthrough Waiting to Exhale and rumors of a film by Jennifer Lopez's production company will generate demand, and justly so--this is a heartfelt, fast-moving, and often funny page-turner. Meredith Parets
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Great for what it is
By A Customer
Considering this book was from the onset compared to Terry McMillan, I didn't expect this text to indicate the second coming of Toni Morrison. Thus, I read it as a "beach book" and I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I would say, though, that the book is somewhere in between mass market books and literary fiction. The book was much better than I expected it to be, and I stayed up all night to read it. It was fun and sad and it explored a lot of heavy issues without being didactic. Most Latinas/os writers tend to write literary works; Valdes-Rodriguez's offers something new, something that is light but still manages to show the hardships of life while still showing that Latina/o experiences do not simply circulate around issues of poverty and racism. I think it's important to have Latina/o writers writing about all aspects of life, not just memoirs that depict racism, poverty, etc. Valdes-Rodriguez does explore racism, homophobia, and domestic violence but this is shown in conjunction with everyday experiences. While many of us experience these issues every day, we also have messy break ups with our partners and have time to laugh; thus, I think Valdes-Rodriguez offers us charcters with complete lives, lives we can all relate to.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Funny, Touching, Easy to Read, Great Book
By Doug
Now and then, I enjoy reading something fun and different, way out of my normal genre. I found this book to be very easy to read, filled with a lot of great insights to life and love, friendship and relationships. I like the idea that friendships formed in high school and college can last a lifetime. Here are some of my random comments about the book.
1. The author is a pro at writing in the first person and giving us a sometimes hilarious stream of consciousness as each of the six girls tells us what is going on in their lives at a given moment. We receive these extremely private thoughts and private reactions to what is being said about them that makes us understand and enjoy each of the characters. For me, this is the main core of the enjoyment of the book. It is surprisingly well done and intimate and as we move from first person of one of the characters to the next, and hear her side of the equation, we understand and more fully understand the relationship.
2. Each of the individual stories is fun and interesting if not a bit exaggerated. But this is what makes a fun story. Something very significant happens over the course of a year to each of the girls as their very unique and successful lives morph primarily through their choice of relationships with men. Each of the girls have this Latina girl baggage of growing up that affects their choices and make them do sometimes foolish things.
3. An additional genius of the book is to show how important these friendships really are and how each of the girl's lives is enhanced and aided by the other five girls and their opinions and the strength they offer to each other through some very difficult and trying times. It's clear that on their own, they may have faltered and could have made bad decisions. It reminds me somewhat of the friendships in "Sex and the City" series.
4. Each of the girls are from "Latina", yet totally different backgrounds and I think there was a lot of good information about how difficult it can be for people from different backgrounds to be approved of and successful in the American culture.
I think you'll find this to be a pretty fun and easy read full of mischief and fun, while still a pretty strong and insightful group of stories that fit very well together.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Good Writing/Bien Escrito
By L. Mintah
The Dirty Girls Social Club by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is very different from the usual chick lit/romance novel fare. The author tackles the subject of what being Latina or Hispanic really means, not just the white perception of the term. She discusses and explores, through her characters, the many differences that exist between Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Mexicans, and Dominicans. While engrossing, however, the reader is left somewhat unsatisfied at the end. The resolutions are a little cliched, and it seems at times as though Valdes-Rodriguez wrote the book hoping for a movie screenplay. However, I did enjoy this book very much.
The story is about six Hispanic women who have been fast friends since their college days. While very different in personality, background, careers, and lives, the women have resolved to get together twice a year to catch up, no matter what. When Elizabeth, a beautiful and popular local newscaster is outed by a jealous co-worker, the friends come to her defense. The "sucias," or "dirty girls" in Spanish, do not share all their secrets, however. Some will come back to hurt them. What makes this story realistic is that the reader will not like all the sucias. Some will rub you the wrong way and you will want to slap them. Just like your friends in real life.
Valdes-Rodriguez is a journalist who has written for the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe. While the main character is Lauren, a newspaper columnist, Valdes-Rodriguez writes most convincingly about one of my favorite characters, Amber. Amber is a musician who is fiercely proud of her Pre-Columbian Aztec heritage. "We made love and listened to the deep green voice of the moon." Damn, that is good writing (As a writer myself, as well as a moon aficionado, I am jealous of that line)! Another favorite character of mine is Usnavys, who reminds me of Star Jones (pre weight loss).
There is a fair amount of non-translated Spanish in the book. While this will not hinder your understanding of the story in the least, I have seen in other reviews that it frustrates some non-Spanish speakers who cannot understand every word in the book. I do speak Spanish, and felt this enhanced my enjoyment of the book. If you want translations, e-mail me!
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