The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Revised Edition: An Account in Words and Pictures

by Phoebe Gloeckner

Book Overview

First released in 2002, this provocative, critically acclaimed novel is now a major motion picture starring Bel Powley, Kristen Wiig, and Alexander Skarsg rd.

"I don't remember being born. I was a very ugly child. My appearance has not improved so I guess it was a lucky break when he was attracted by my youthfulness." So begins the wrenching diary of Minnie Goetze, a fifteen-year-old girl longing for love and acceptance and struggling...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1623170346
• ISBN13: 9781623170349
• Release Date: July 2015
• Publisher: North Atlantic Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.6" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Details and trigger but you can’t put it down

This book has a lot of triggers in it about abuse and drugs. This book is also very hard to put down once you start reading it. It is for a mature audience because it is very detailed. I did buy this used and it was almost brand new. I really enjoyed reading this book (I’m 21 and I’m reading it for women’s lit in college)

Thank You

I fell in love with Minnie.So many adults fail miserably at writing the adolescent. This is a brilliant work - it doesn't belittle the character and allows her to have intelligence and understanding at a delicate age, while still retaining her youth. The illustrated storyboards are weaved into the book beautifully. I can't imagine the story without them, as they provide a different kind of insight.Just excellent.

This is a dark ride. Turn on your Lava Lite!

Like the character Minnie, I was also 15 in 1976. I used to walk around the neighborhood drinking beer out of a brown paper bag, or go to the all-night diner at the drugstore at 3 am to drink coffee & smoke cigarettes. This book is totally evocative of those times. What's more, Phoebe Gloeckner manages to capture the emotional landscape of adolescence with a breathtaking acuity reminiscent of Francesca Lia Block or Lynda Barry. I recommend "The Hanged Man" by Francesca Lia Block. Not everybody can handle dark books like this, but to those of us who lived through similar times, this is a special book. Please give us more, Phoebe!

Well Done

Phoebe Gloeckner succeeded in charting her course through a difficult marriage between two forms of storytelling that have often been at odds with each other. Literature has never been kind to comics but Gloeckner seamlessly switches from words to images which complement each other and make this book a real page turner.I am a devout fan of Gloeckner's work, let there be no secret about it. In an ongoing effort to interest my girlfriend in comics I give her contemporary comics by women. "The Diary of a Teenage Girl" was such a gift. However, I read the book cover to cover before she could ever get to it. Unfortunately there are not to many published U.S. women comics artists out there. Those who are published have very unique individual voices which stand high above the bleak mannerism that has been plaguing American comics in the second half of the last decade. Gloeckner is at the top of her game.

Diary of a Teenage Girl (Phoebe Gloeckner)

Ever since reading 'A Child's Life,' I'd been looking forward to this book, and I was not disappointed. Phoebe Gloeckner's 15-year-old fictional alter-ego, Minnie, keeps a journal that is sharply observant, articulate, and funny, without crossing the line into the 'adult over-writing' that often plagues adults' versions of children's diaries. The setting (1970s San Francisco) makes many of the things that Minnie describes matter-of-factly seem jarring when you step back--affairs with older men, 'responsible' parental drug use, etc. Yet when you're reading the book, Minnie's world envelops you completely.Unlike many other (quite believable) teenage characters, Minnie does not even pretend to be cool or detached. She blatantly states her craving to be loved, hugged, touched. The dynamics of her affair with her mother's boyfriend, in which she tends to be the sexual instigator, are fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time. The juxtaposition of the sordid and the innocent is seamless: one minute Minnie and her best friend are swigging schnapps and passing joints on their way to a sexual encounter with a married man; the next, they're running down the street laughing, stuffing their faces with dime-store candy.Gloeckner's drawings are plush and emotional, detailing specific blocks in San Francisco and capturing facial expressions with equal care.Anyone who likes to be swept up wholly into a character's life should enjoy this unusual book.