Synopses & Reviews
Bestselling memoirist and psychotherapist Kerry Cohen (Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity) explores complicated female friendships in Girl Trouble. Beginning with her relationship with her sister Tyler Cohen, who illustrates the memoir, Kerry examines the many ways female friendships can affect a girl’s life. From bullying and failed friendships to competition and painful break ups, Girl Trouble brings forth a story of how one girl learned to navigate the many difficulties of feminine friendships. Girls and women everywhere will relate to the confusion, the hurt feelings, and they will also learn along with Kerry how to make better choices over the years.
Review
"One of the ways this book offers healing is through Cohen’s collaboration with the illustrator, her older sister Tyler. During "an ugly divorce, fraught with affairs and devastation and anger," their mother chose the older sister as her ally and confidante, leaving a breach between the two sisters that they wouldn’t repair until adulthood. Her sister was her first true female friend and the first betrayal (of many). A brief, canny book that will make any girl who feels alone feel less alone." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"I was mesmerized by Girl Trouble. Kerry Cohen writes about friendship and longing with such searching intensity, I simply could not put the book down until I’d read it all. Girl Trouble is raw, real, and revelatory." Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Review
"Kerry Cohen traces a delicate thread that runs thorough so many women’s lives—from our earliest years to our last, we navigate the intricacies of female friendship. Cohen’s concise portraits bring to life all those girls we knew—and loved madly and hated, and envied and feared—carrying the reader from the years when girlhood itself felt as tender and raw as a bruise, through the emotional minefield of friendships in early womanhood, to the later laughter and ease that we finally are able to share with our female friends. A small treasure." Marya Hornbacher, author of Madness: A Bipolar Life
Review
"A clear and concise survey of one woman’s journey through a life’s worth of difficult and sometimes devastating female friendships. Cohen bravely details how one’s family of origin impacts our later relationships, and accurately demonstrates how we must first sort ourselves out before we can establish healthy bonds with others." Blake Nelson, author of The City Wants You Alone
About the Author
Kerry Cohen is a psychotherapist and is on the faculty of the Red Earth Low-Residency MFA program. She is the author of the memoirs Loose Girl and Seeing Ezra as well as 7 other books. She lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.
Tyler Cohen makes comics that mix true vignettes, surrealism, and journalistic bits about language. Her book Primahood: Magenta will be out September 2016 from Stacked Deck Press. She is a contributor to the Ignatz-award winning anthology Qu33r (Northwest Press), The Feminist Utopia Project (Feminist Press), What’s Your Sign, Girl? (Ninth Art Press), and MuthaMagazine.com.