"Blueprints for Building Better Girls," by Elissa Schappell

What brave, sad, confused, confusing, risk-taking, drug-taking, drinking, anorexic, tough, confidence-lacking, sister-supporting, self-destructive, surprising, vulnerable, and ultimately good girls are portrayed in Elissa Schappell's "Blueprints for Building Better Girls" (Simon & Schuster, 2011)! Like the author's earlier book, "Use Me," which I reviewed here on 10/4/11, this is a novel but really a collection of interlocking short stories. There are many different girl characters, along with some grown women characters, and some are the same characters portrayed at different times in their lives. At times one has to struggle, and turn back the pages, to remember the characters from earlier stories and how they are connected. But this is not a drawback. The portraits are deeply etched, sharp, poignant, and heartbreaking. In a fictional way they reflect much of what we know, see, read, and witness about teenaged and older girls/women today, in this confusing time when girls and women are told they can do anything, but then find that all choices are fraught, and most decisions come with conditions and codas and unforeseen consequences. I imagine this description makes the book sound depressing, and in a sense it is, but it is also gripping, real, sharply and precisely written, and sometimes very funny. Schappell has a gift for capturing the quirky, the different, and yet the very recognizable.