Book Review: Dead Girls by Alice Bolin

Most of us have seen a “dead girl show.” This is what Alice Bolin calls a TV show that centers around the dead girl body, usually there in order to propel  a male narrative forward. Twin Peaks, NCIS, and Law and Order are all examples of television programs that center around, usually, a dead girl. But Alice Bolin’s Dead Girls goes further than just talking about the dead girl shows. Her collection of essays explores the whole genre and disconnect associated with the trope. 

The essay collection is really well-done. I was a bit shocked in reading it, because Bolin pulled me in with her narrative style. She is an excellent writer, and she does a masterful job of pulling the reader into the world she’s describing. Between analyzing Joan Didion and James Baldwins’ depictions of Los Angeles as broad brushstrokes and further perpetrators of stereotypes and getting in deep to the depictions of the city and those living in it. In the chapter, “The Place Makes Everyone a Gambler,” she talks about Didion’s Play It As It Lays.  I actually read this novel earlier this year, and really appreciated the analysis and found what Bolin had to say about it very insightful. 

I strongly recommend Dead Girls to those who appreciate essays about what pop culture portrays and how that bleeds into the constructs of our lives. 

About Dead Girls

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (June 26, 2018)

“Dead Girls is everything I want in an essay collection: provocative lines of inquiry, macabre humor, blistering intelligence… I love this book.” — Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties

“Bracing and blazingly smart, Alice Bolin’s Dead Girls could hardly be more needed or more timely.” — Megan Abbott, Edgar Award-winning author of You Will Know Me

Best of summer 2018 – included on best-of lists by Bitch Magazine, Harpers Bazaar, The Millions, Esquire, Refinery29, Nylon, PopSugar, The Chicago Tribune, Book Riot, and CrimeReads

In this poignant collection, Alice Bolin examines iconic American works from the essays of Joan Didion and James Baldwin to Twin Peaks, Britney Spears, and Serial, illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories. Smart and accessible, thoughtful and heartfelt, Bolin investigates the implications of our cultural fixations, and her own role as a consumer and creator.

Bolin chronicles her life in Los Angeles, dissects the Noir, revisits her own coming of age, and analyzes stories of witches and werewolves, both appreciating and challenging the narratives we construct and absorb every day. Dead Girls begins by exploring the trope of dead women in fiction, and ends by interrogating the more complex dilemma of living women – both the persistent injustices they suffer and the oppression that white women help perpetrate.

Reminiscent of the piercing insight of Rebecca Solnit and the critical skill of Hilton Als, Bolin constructs a sharp, perceptive, and revelatory dialogue on the portrayal of women in media and their roles in our culture.

Purchase Links

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About Alice Bolin

Alice Bolin’s nonfiction has appeared in many publications including ELLE, the Awl, the LA Review of Books, Salon, VICE’s Broadly, The Paris Review Daily, and The New Yorker‘s Page-Turner blog. She currently teaches creative nonfiction at the University of Memphis.

Find out more about Alice at her website, and connect with her on Twitter and Instagram.