For a less wholesome, darkly fun, more diverse version of Gilmore Girls, I recommend Ginny & Georgia. They still eat unhealthy foods and stay easily in shape, but too much realism in TV would make me wonder why I bother to watch.
Oh, I didn't mean all stories should be concrete realism, of course! And I was only referring to the crap they got to eat and drink without consequence. Please keep writing that novel exactly the way you write.
Don't worry, I was trying (and failing) to be a bit humorous. On the other hand, I did let your words guide me -- I sometimes struggle with letting go of "real" and just doing what one can only do in fiction: making things the way I want them.
"She will have had four separate lives since the Daughters of America, not one of them involved boxing, and so her injury, those un-closable fists, will not be some battle relic, but, rather, a sorry, pathetic disability." from Rita Bullwinkel's Headshot
I watched Gilmore Girls as a newly single mom and again, several years later, with my then 12-year-old daughter (why yes, there were some very awkward moments…which sparked some awkward but healthy conversation lol). I also had a complex reaction to the show, and for the record, I am Team Rory. None of her boyfriends were ideal long-term matches for her, in my opinion. My daughter was firmly Team Jess. So that’s just great, not keeping me up at night at all, haha.
And this is the sentence that is lingering:
“Among the books chance puts in our hands are a few that were never meant for us …” —from a letter to Penelope Fitzgerald from Alberto Manguel.
Ha! Your daughter will probably find many more things that keep you up at night. You are, of course, completely right about the males in Rory's life - none of them were ideal matches -- but in the end idea is a long shot for most of us, right? And wasn't Jess -- as terrible a communicator and as self-absorbed as he was -- the guy who spoke her language and wanted her to be what she was meant to be? He was a terrible boyfriend but a good friend.
I love love love that sentence. What book found its way to your hands but was not, perhaps, meant for you? I'm going to be thinking about this one for a while.
Oh, I completely agree. I liked Jess as a character. I could talk about this for quite some time but I will refrain!
That sentence is on my mind because of a book that was put in my hands by entirely by chance, almost as though I was meant to read it at this very moment in my life - The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald.
I have lived through enough daughter mother relationships at close quarters to see them as anything but entertaining. I suspect if we had a gun culture here in England there be a lot of dead mothers.🐰
Well, that's a terrifying thought. Good thing that there an absence of gun culture in England because we need all the mothers and daughters to live long enough to figure each other out.
Never saw GG, but can wholeheartedly recommend a great mother-daughter film I love, Off the Map. The whole family is great... Joan Allen and Sam Elliot are the parents and the daughter is played by the amazing Valentina de Angelis. See it!
My quote is from a witty thriller i just read/reviewed, The Girl Who Wants by Amy Vansant.
"Hands over her face, she sat on the tub's edge, willing herself to stop crying. Through her fingers, she stared at the unfeeling objects around her. They looked the same as they had a day earlier but weren’t. Everything had changed."
I've never heard of the movie but am thrilled to learn of it now. Thank you!
And that sentence captures a moment I swear I've lived. When something changes inside of us -- everything changes, even the familiar inanimate objects we've seen forever.
The book Bastard Out of Carolina is a single mother/daughter story, one that more closely resembles my own. I haven't seen GG, probably won't. Show me something from the blue collar working class, not a comedy, and I'll be interested. Quote from book I'm currently reading: "The myth is that if the sleeping giants are awakened, they will take revenge on all of us."
It's not for everyone. It helped me that my stepdaughter was a fan who could guide me through it and because I love her and love talking with her, I wanted to watch the show with her in a way. On the other hand, every woman everywhere will identify with at least one moment or character once in a while. And it's entertaining.
Anne Lamott in Operating Instructions is one of my favorites because she lets me share the highs and lows of being a single and first-time parent. She can load more humor, sarcasm and reality in one sentence than anyone I have read on the topic. Happy Mother's Day!
I’m not a single mom but we do have an only daughter. She’s 25 now. We are good friends, but I’m also mom, so it’s an interesting mix. She’s emerging into herself and it’s hard for me to watch any stumbles because it takes me back to my tumultuous twenties and it’s not so much fun to revisit. She, however, has been brought up in a much different way than I ever was. She is a much smarter, wise young lady. My own mom died 2 years before our daughter was born. Oh, what I would give to see that interaction. My mom was always the mom. Only the mom. I’m sure my daughter would know me better if she knew my mom. Generational wisdom can be both a blessing and a curse I imagine however. But I am sure my mom would have adored my daughter and vice versa. However, I will never know. It makes Mother’s Day bittersweet for me at best. Although yesterday my daughter and I spent the whole day shopping and going out to lunch and it was the absolute best. So I count my blessings and she is 1-100.
I tried watching GG in the past and didn’t quite connect to it, but may try watching the reboot. I had forgotten about that.
As always, thank you for the thoughtful post. Happy Mother’s Day to you.
I also recently read the book How To Love Your Daughter by Hila Blum. I liked it and didn’t like it but could not put it down. An interesting book indeed.
I never wanted to revisit my twenties either but lately I do look back on those years with far more forgiveness of the idiot I felt like most of the time. The title of the book you are reading intrigues me. One thing Gilmore Girls did for me was to bring back that visceral fear of having a daughter that I felt the entire time I was pregnant. I have not written about this and want to. I only now feel closer to being ready. It has something to do with being so young and still so much a daughter that I didn't trust myself to see a little girl for who she was instead of viewing her as a smaller "me." It may also have to do with how out of my depth I often felt in the world of "girls" and girl things. I didn't like myself all that much for much of the time.
I feel wistful now about the whole thing. I would love to have had a granddaughter. That would have been the perfect relationship for me with a younger woman in our family. I might have been been more fun than Emily and I am now able to enjoy everything about a young woman finding her way.
“…to see a little girl for who she was instead of viewing her as a smaller "me."
Well, I read this sentence and was like UGH, exactly. I tried to give my daughter everything I wanted and that didn’t have and am currently revisiting that and that sentence was so spot on for me. I love reading what you write because it always resonates with me so deeply. Loving our adult kids feels like a constant revisiting of the past while moving forward. It’s exhausting at times. Our generation (I’m 64) being much closer to it than our generation’s parents who kept their distance.
I’m sure you would be the perfect Grandmother. You are so interesting and can articulate things so well in a way I cannot. I could see you going to bookstores with her “I know that author!” and traveling. Gardening. Walking on the beach hunting for sea glass. Going to New Hampshire (my favorite place) and looking at things with a keen eye and observation. How lovely. Of course I do have friends with Granddaughters and all of that is not happening in their lives because the grandchildren are now so so SO busy with so much structured activity and they cannot just go for ice cream on a hot summer day because they are on carefully constructed diets of artificial nothing and organic and whatnot. And this is what my boomer friends lament about. Because they too had this lovely fantasy of being Auntie Mame types. So we just hang out together and drink wine and lick our wounds and try to just sooth ourselves and continue loving them all in the best way we know how.
I will love this show forever no matter how problematic it is. As someone who grew up afraid of doing the wrong thing according to the dad figure in her life, I romanticized a life without one and this will always be a safe space (even if I have learned to work through those feelings as an adult!).
Another late comer to "The Gilmore Girls," but once I started watching, dammit, I too was hooked. I think I tuned in once I found out the series was done by Team Palladino. Mothers and daughters...we'll never run out of stories. Thanks for yours.
I love this fresh and thoughtful take! I grew up on Gilmore Girls, watching it over and over again, and still do a rewatch once a year or so. For a while, I always rooted for Rory, then had a phase of rooting for Lorelai, and now I'm all in on Emily. She's the best Gilmore Girl.
I struggled with Rory so much! I was on and off with Lorelei but I really came to appreciate the mother of them all: Emily. I may get in touch with a question for another piece I'm working on since you are clearly an expert!
For a less wholesome, darkly fun, more diverse version of Gilmore Girls, I recommend Ginny & Georgia. They still eat unhealthy foods and stay easily in shape, but too much realism in TV would make me wonder why I bother to watch.
You make an excellent point. In fact, why am I writing a novel at all if it is only going to be as "real" as real life?
Oh, I didn't mean all stories should be concrete realism, of course! And I was only referring to the crap they got to eat and drink without consequence. Please keep writing that novel exactly the way you write.
Don't worry, I was trying (and failing) to be a bit humorous. On the other hand, I did let your words guide me -- I sometimes struggle with letting go of "real" and just doing what one can only do in fiction: making things the way I want them.
I can be a bit slow sometimes when it comes to reading tone. And yes! That's at least 50% of the fun of fiction writing!
"She will have had four separate lives since the Daughters of America, not one of them involved boxing, and so her injury, those un-closable fists, will not be some battle relic, but, rather, a sorry, pathetic disability." from Rita Bullwinkel's Headshot
You must be reading an early copy! Lucky man. I'll be thinking about those "un-closable fists" for the rest of the weekend.
It's been out since March!
Wow, am I behind things. Thx!
I watched Gilmore Girls as a newly single mom and again, several years later, with my then 12-year-old daughter (why yes, there were some very awkward moments…which sparked some awkward but healthy conversation lol). I also had a complex reaction to the show, and for the record, I am Team Rory. None of her boyfriends were ideal long-term matches for her, in my opinion. My daughter was firmly Team Jess. So that’s just great, not keeping me up at night at all, haha.
And this is the sentence that is lingering:
“Among the books chance puts in our hands are a few that were never meant for us …” —from a letter to Penelope Fitzgerald from Alberto Manguel.
Ha! Your daughter will probably find many more things that keep you up at night. You are, of course, completely right about the males in Rory's life - none of them were ideal matches -- but in the end idea is a long shot for most of us, right? And wasn't Jess -- as terrible a communicator and as self-absorbed as he was -- the guy who spoke her language and wanted her to be what she was meant to be? He was a terrible boyfriend but a good friend.
I love love love that sentence. What book found its way to your hands but was not, perhaps, meant for you? I'm going to be thinking about this one for a while.
Oh, I completely agree. I liked Jess as a character. I could talk about this for quite some time but I will refrain!
That sentence is on my mind because of a book that was put in my hands by entirely by chance, almost as though I was meant to read it at this very moment in my life - The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald.
I have lived through enough daughter mother relationships at close quarters to see them as anything but entertaining. I suspect if we had a gun culture here in England there be a lot of dead mothers.🐰
Well, that's a terrifying thought. Good thing that there an absence of gun culture in England because we need all the mothers and daughters to live long enough to figure each other out.
I have never really thought about it before but I could certainly tell a collection of tales. What about fathers and daughters?🐰
Never saw GG, but can wholeheartedly recommend a great mother-daughter film I love, Off the Map. The whole family is great... Joan Allen and Sam Elliot are the parents and the daughter is played by the amazing Valentina de Angelis. See it!
My quote is from a witty thriller i just read/reviewed, The Girl Who Wants by Amy Vansant.
"Hands over her face, she sat on the tub's edge, willing herself to stop crying. Through her fingers, she stared at the unfeeling objects around her. They looked the same as they had a day earlier but weren’t. Everything had changed."
I've never heard of the movie but am thrilled to learn of it now. Thank you!
And that sentence captures a moment I swear I've lived. When something changes inside of us -- everything changes, even the familiar inanimate objects we've seen forever.
Exactly. Been there.
“There is often no happily-ever-after story for mothers and daughters who have struggled.” Facts.
The book Bastard Out of Carolina is a single mother/daughter story, one that more closely resembles my own. I haven't seen GG, probably won't. Show me something from the blue collar working class, not a comedy, and I'll be interested. Quote from book I'm currently reading: "The myth is that if the sleeping giants are awakened, they will take revenge on all of us."
I've met Dorothy Allison but I still have not read her book. It's been years. I need to fix that.
Your sentence makes me want to poke a sleeping giant.
All very interesting comments and suggestions. A lot of info on the GG. Guess I will check it out. Thx!
https://writerswrites.com/
It's not for everyone. It helped me that my stepdaughter was a fan who could guide me through it and because I love her and love talking with her, I wanted to watch the show with her in a way. On the other hand, every woman everywhere will identify with at least one moment or character once in a while. And it's entertaining.
Anne Lamott in Operating Instructions is one of my favorites because she lets me share the highs and lows of being a single and first-time parent. She can load more humor, sarcasm and reality in one sentence than anyone I have read on the topic. Happy Mother's Day!
She's really gifted, isn't she? Happy Mother's Day to you, too!
I knew I was an adult when I rewatched and was fully team Emily!
That's funny and so true for me as well!
I’m not a single mom but we do have an only daughter. She’s 25 now. We are good friends, but I’m also mom, so it’s an interesting mix. She’s emerging into herself and it’s hard for me to watch any stumbles because it takes me back to my tumultuous twenties and it’s not so much fun to revisit. She, however, has been brought up in a much different way than I ever was. She is a much smarter, wise young lady. My own mom died 2 years before our daughter was born. Oh, what I would give to see that interaction. My mom was always the mom. Only the mom. I’m sure my daughter would know me better if she knew my mom. Generational wisdom can be both a blessing and a curse I imagine however. But I am sure my mom would have adored my daughter and vice versa. However, I will never know. It makes Mother’s Day bittersweet for me at best. Although yesterday my daughter and I spent the whole day shopping and going out to lunch and it was the absolute best. So I count my blessings and she is 1-100.
I tried watching GG in the past and didn’t quite connect to it, but may try watching the reboot. I had forgotten about that.
As always, thank you for the thoughtful post. Happy Mother’s Day to you.
I also recently read the book How To Love Your Daughter by Hila Blum. I liked it and didn’t like it but could not put it down. An interesting book indeed.
I never wanted to revisit my twenties either but lately I do look back on those years with far more forgiveness of the idiot I felt like most of the time. The title of the book you are reading intrigues me. One thing Gilmore Girls did for me was to bring back that visceral fear of having a daughter that I felt the entire time I was pregnant. I have not written about this and want to. I only now feel closer to being ready. It has something to do with being so young and still so much a daughter that I didn't trust myself to see a little girl for who she was instead of viewing her as a smaller "me." It may also have to do with how out of my depth I often felt in the world of "girls" and girl things. I didn't like myself all that much for much of the time.
I feel wistful now about the whole thing. I would love to have had a granddaughter. That would have been the perfect relationship for me with a younger woman in our family. I might have been been more fun than Emily and I am now able to enjoy everything about a young woman finding her way.
“…to see a little girl for who she was instead of viewing her as a smaller "me."
Well, I read this sentence and was like UGH, exactly. I tried to give my daughter everything I wanted and that didn’t have and am currently revisiting that and that sentence was so spot on for me. I love reading what you write because it always resonates with me so deeply. Loving our adult kids feels like a constant revisiting of the past while moving forward. It’s exhausting at times. Our generation (I’m 64) being much closer to it than our generation’s parents who kept their distance.
I’m sure you would be the perfect Grandmother. You are so interesting and can articulate things so well in a way I cannot. I could see you going to bookstores with her “I know that author!” and traveling. Gardening. Walking on the beach hunting for sea glass. Going to New Hampshire (my favorite place) and looking at things with a keen eye and observation. How lovely. Of course I do have friends with Granddaughters and all of that is not happening in their lives because the grandchildren are now so so SO busy with so much structured activity and they cannot just go for ice cream on a hot summer day because they are on carefully constructed diets of artificial nothing and organic and whatnot. And this is what my boomer friends lament about. Because they too had this lovely fantasy of being Auntie Mame types. So we just hang out together and drink wine and lick our wounds and try to just sooth ourselves and continue loving them all in the best way we know how.
I will love this show forever no matter how problematic it is. As someone who grew up afraid of doing the wrong thing according to the dad figure in her life, I romanticized a life without one and this will always be a safe space (even if I have learned to work through those feelings as an adult!).
Another late comer to "The Gilmore Girls," but once I started watching, dammit, I too was hooked. I think I tuned in once I found out the series was done by Team Palladino. Mothers and daughters...we'll never run out of stories. Thanks for yours.
I love this fresh and thoughtful take! I grew up on Gilmore Girls, watching it over and over again, and still do a rewatch once a year or so. For a while, I always rooted for Rory, then had a phase of rooting for Lorelai, and now I'm all in on Emily. She's the best Gilmore Girl.
I struggled with Rory so much! I was on and off with Lorelei but I really came to appreciate the mother of them all: Emily. I may get in touch with a question for another piece I'm working on since you are clearly an expert!
Emily is the real winner at the end, in the revival. I love it. I’m happy to talk about Gilmore Girls any time!!