How Boys See Girls

by David Gilmour

Book Overview

Bix has it all: a failed marriage, a faltering career as a speechwriter, a drinking problem (not to mention the pills) and a wayward eye for the women. The last thing he needs is trouble named Holly, which is, of course, exactly what he gets -- briefly. His only assets are his daughter Zoey and an excruciating (and excruciatingly funny) sense of who he is, which becomes his path to redemption from the erotic rollercoaster that is this impressive and...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679403965
• ISBN13: 9780679403968
• Release Date: November 1991
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 161 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A sometimes tender sometimes hilarious tale of sexual obsession

A very quick read, and a most enjoyable one - if you don't mind a lot of very frank talk of sex and how men - in their most secret thoughts - see women. This is probably the most compellingly "nasty" book I've read since Portnoy's Complaint. And yet Gilmour's books seems somehow sweeter than Roth's now classic book. The title here comes from a book that the protagonist's preadolescent daughter Zoey is reading. Near the end of the book I found another line that might have made an interesting title: "Holly Briggs, I love you." It was what the 40 year-old narrator, Bix, wrote, in very small letters, along the baseboard of his 20 year-old mistress's bedroom. But that title would make it sound too much like a book for young teenage girls, which is something How Boys See Girls certainly is not. It is instead a startlingly candid and graphic account of a May-December romance, an affair that is often reduced to near sordidness, but the skill of the writer prevents it from being mere pornography. Instead, maybe it's better to call it simply a "late coming-of-age" story. Suffice it to say that sexual obsession has perhaps never been quite so graphically described. It is brutally frank, funny, heartbreaking, tender and sad - all those things and more. Call me crude if you want, but this is a good book. - Tim Bazzett, author of SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA

Why are there only 5 stars? This book deserves 10

I discovered David Gilmour's fiction completely by accident; my ex husband received it from his sister, and my life was changed. David Gilmour has had a long and successful career in Canadian media, but his fiction- specifically, this book- is his greatest accomplishment. The reader will find Bix by turns hilarious, repulsive, pitiful and loveable.... some aspect of his story is bound to hit home with everyone. Gilmour turns a phrase like no one else; he is a master.Buy this book here, you'll be hard pressed to find it anywhere now...read it twice, then buy Lost Between Houses, Sparrow Nights, An Affair With The Moon, and Back On Tuesday. ENJOY!

One of my all-time favorites!

I love "How Boys See Girls." Notice I wrote "love" rather than "loved." That's because I re-read it on a regular basis. This is the story of prescription- and booze-abusing, aging hack Bix who is obsessed by the young, beautiful and completely screwed-up Holly. Set in Toronto, the book mirrors Proust's "Swann's Way" and its tale of obsessive and unhealthy love. A great opening: "I was drinking a lot in those days. I don't apologize for it. You have to do something to make yourself feel better and for a while there it worked. When the booze clicked in, things looked ripe as yellow flowers and the moment soared like one of those free-floating birds I saw from the hotel window when I was a kid. In those days I hung out in a bar called the Circus. I went in for a drink one day and I never came out."