Pagan Kennedy’s characters are always in my head. When I wake up with a pair of scissors, or a scrap of tshirt, or a plastic dinosaur under me, I think about Lilly. Hank stands in as a nice shorthand for every indie rock boy I’ve known who was desperate for fame and ashamed of it at the same time. I know the girl who creates a nest in the library out of ridiculous theories because the seminar is way over her freshman head. She keeps me from doing the same.
I also think of her as the girl who never wore makeup until one day attending that seminar in bright red lipstick that she quickly smudged off, but I think I might be mixing Pagan’s story with a piece about makeup from Bust magazine. That’s the thing about reading a lot—characters get mixed up in your memory, become different people. It’s weird.
But that’s the thing about a writer like Pagan Kennedy: she knows her audience, and uses a shorthand that lets them know she knows. But then, I have to wonder: Can I really claim that smirkingly name-dropping The Yellow Wallpaper* is a sly wink, when all around me are those complaining that mentioning the brand of a new girl’s lipstick is shameful, pandering, lazy writing? Designed only to sell more of said lipstick?
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I just started Confessions of a Memory Eater. I’ll let you know how it is.
*just in case you didn't take an intro to womens lit class
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