Why Girls Are Weird: A Novel
Anna Koval aspires to be a writer but pays the bills by working as a librarian at an Austin high school. Killing time at work, she posts a story about "Slutty Barbies" online and is amazed at the response. Soon she is "creating an entire life on the Internet" and changing from Anna Koval, a "nothing-special-twenty-something to Anna K: Web celebrity." She writes about her shortcomings, her fears, and her love life, and hundreds of readers, including a neurotic groupie and a potential new love, respond in amazingly personal e-mails of their own. When Anna's father dies unexpectedly, she pours out her grief to her invisible fans, and then realizes that she is revealing too much of herself. Feeling overly vulnerable, she gradually deletes her files because, as she explains, "too much of me was up on that webpage, plastered like a billboard." Ribon herself kept a popular Web journal called "Squishy," and she is also a comedian, experiences that shape her light and entertaining first novel.Deborah DonovanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved