Not That Kind of Girl: A Memoir

“[A] stunning new memoir… thick with contemplation, packed with ideas and images rendered in exacting, evocative prose…. Brave and startlingly beautiful.” —Time Out New York

“Truthful, intelligent, and engrossing. This may become a generation's definitive account of books and the city.” —Jeff Sharlet, New York Times bestselling author of The Family

A loving and literate, honest and insightful look into the heart of that unsung heroine: the good girl. Fans of the strong narrative voices of such writers as Donna Tartt (The Secret History, The Little Friend), Nell Freudenberger (Lucky Girls, The Dissident), and Amy Bloom (Come to Me, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You), as well as books such as The Nanny Diaries, Prep, and The Devil Wears Prada, will love Not That Kind of Girl: Carlene Bauer’s hilarious and touching memoir of God, books, and rock and roll.

How does a girl raised on Bible verses and praise songs find her own voice in the static of punk rock and the pages of Sylvia Plath?

• Evangelical Upbringing: From Christian school and "dying to self" to discovering a world of music and literature her church warned her against.
• Faith and Doubt: A raw and honest exploration of what it means to question the only truth you’ve ever known, trading childhood certainty for the complexities of a life lived on your own terms.
• Gen X Coming-of-Age: Set against a backdrop of 80s and 90s culture, this is a story of finding your identity through The Smiths, Sylvia Plath, and the seismic shift from suburban South Jersey to New York City.
• A Good Girl’s Rebellion: An intelligent, witty, and heartfelt look at a quiet rebellion—not against rules, but for a bigger, more complicated life than the one she was offered.

Raised in evangelical churches that preach apocalypse now, Carlene Bauer grows up happy to oblige the God who presides over her New Jersey girlhood. But in high school and in college, her intellectual and spiritual horizons widen, though still she finds it hard to let go of her ingrained ideals and to rebel as she knows she should. She loves rock 'n' roll but politely declines offers of sex and drugs, and hovers between a hunger for the world and a suspicion of it. In her twenties, however, determined to make up for lost time, Bauer undertakes a belated and often comic coming-of-age in New York City—ultimately falling in love and losing her religion, and left wondering just what it means to be good.

Sharply written, hilarious, and touching, Not That Kind of Girl is the story of one young woman's efforts to define worldliness, ambition, and love on her own terms.

“The tension between the sacred and the secular permeates every page of this heartfelt memoir. . . . Poignantly describe[s] the grace and beauty of ordinary moments.” - Publishers Weekly

“[A] thoughtful yet adventure-filled account of growing up religious and then . . . making her way in the Big Apple’s media/writing scene. . . . Go check out the blurb [Jeff Sharlet] ended up sending her, practically anointing her the voice of a generation. Are we surprised? No.” - Ben Dickinson, Elle.com

“That Bauer’s story has a happy ending—she is, by any standard, a gifted and accomplished writer—is a testament, ultimately, to the power of talent. Bauer evolves, of course, in the memoir—but it’s not the reflexive abandonment of a narrow girlhood that we’ve become used to. And no one who reads Bauer’s book can doubt that it’s variety of experience and, yes, worldview that makes for true vibrancy in writing as in life.” - Jezebel

“Not That Kind of Girl is a vigorously observed book about sex, God, and reading, by a tremendously talented writer who knows that none of those words—‘sex,’ ‘God,’ or ‘reading’—leads to the kind of tidy conclusions that have come to make memoir a disreputable genre. Carlene Bauer’s autobiography—one of the most truthful, intelligent, and engrossing I’ve read in years—redeems the form. This Christ-haunted confession of a ‘good girl’ who goes to New York may become a generation’s definitive account of books and the city.” - Jeff Sharlet, New York Times bestselling author of The Family

“There are many memoirs that take sex seriously, many that take religion seriously, and still others that take rock music seriously. Not that Kind of Girl is about all three, and it’s a true original.” - Mark Oppenheimer, author of Thirteen and a Day: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah Across America

“Conjuring up the journey of transformation that all of us undergo when we strip off the roles our parents chose for us in favor of improvised intellectual wardrobes scavenged from found ideas, favorite books, flea markets, and cool friends’ closets. . . . [Bauer] renders the journey soulful and suspenseful, a pilgrim’s progress through modern-day bohemia.” - Walter Kirn, Elle

“An elegant, jazzy stylist, puckish without being flip, {Bauer) makes most other memoirists -- of either gender -- seem shallow and gabby by comparison.” - L Magazine