Life's Short, Talk Fast: Fifteen Writers on Why We Can't Stop Watching Gilmore Girls

by Ann Hood (Editor)

Overview

Fifteen leading writers explore what Gilmore Girls means to them in this delightful celebration of a contemporary TV classic.

Fast-talking, warm-hearted, and endlessly rewatchable, Gilmore Girls has bonded real-life mothers and daughters since 2000, when its iconic pilot introduced us to Lorelai, Rory, and their idyllic Connecticut town of Stars Hollow. More than twenty years later, it has become one of the most-streamed TV shows, ever.

In an anthology as intimate and quick-witted as Gilmore Girls itself, best-selling author Ann Hood invites fifteen writers to investigate their personal relationships to the show. (“It’s a show? It’s a lifestyle. It’s a religion.”) Joanna Rakoff considers how Emily Gilmore helped her understand her own mother; Sanjena Sathian sees herself—and Asian American defiance—in Lane Kim; Freya North connects with her son through the show; Francesco Sedita discovers an antidote to pandemic loneliness; Nina de Gramont offers a comic ode to the unreality of Stars Hollow. For anyone who identifies as Team Logan, Team Jess, or even Team Dean, Life’s Short, Talk Fast reveals what Gilmore Girls tells us about ourselves—and why it matters.

 

This publication has not been prepared, approved, or licensed by Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.; Warner Bros Television; or any other entity or individual associated with the creation or production of Gilmore Girls.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324079453
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/12/2024
Edition description:	An Unauthorized Edition
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	101,420
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Ann Hood is the author of a dozen books of memoir and fiction, including the novels The Stolen Child, The Book That Matters Most, and The Knitting Circle, and editor of the anthologies Knitting Yarns and Knitting Pearls. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and New York.

Editorial Reviews

09/02/2024

In this heartfelt tribute to Gilmore Girls, contributors reflect on what the show has meant to them. Tracey Minkin suggests that literature’s prominent role in teenage protagonist Rory Gilmore’s coming-of-age mirrors how books shaped her own adolescence, writing that “the bookish read as we breathe. It’s part of our autonomic nervous system. To not read is unimaginable.” In “Everything Softens,” Rand Richards Cooper recounts how his “roughneck” brother-in-law, “whose path through life had been crooked and full of missteps,” watched “this ultimate girls’ show” while undergoing treatment for the lung cancer that would eventually kill him, finding comfort in the portrayal of the fictional Connecticut town of Stars Hollow as a haven for misfits. Elsewhere, Sanjena Sathian compares her experience growing up as a South Asian woman in a predominantly white town with Korean character Lane Kim’s upbringing in Stars Hollow, and expresses ambivalence about how the term Asian American flattens the diversity found among Asian ethnicities and nationalities: “What I share with Lane isn’t Eastern roots—it’s the self-consciousness with which we must react, respond, and relate to America, as outsiders to this country.” The personal meditations are as soul-stirring as the show itself and shed light on its broad appeal. Gilmore Girls devotees will relish this. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly