A critic on National Public Radio said 'Colony Girl' was a gem that had been overlooked by other critics and that hadn't received the acclaim it deserved. He said the male author had done an astonishing job of writing in the voice of a young girl. After I read the book, I gave myself a dope-slap. Why had I trusted a man to tell me that another man wrote convincingly in the voice of a girl?!?! The book is little more than a male fantasy about what discovering sex ought to be like for young girls. The voice is wrong, wrong, wrong. The other critics were right to ignore this book -- and I wish I had.

This is one of those books that you enjoy while reading and dislike after finishing. Every moment in the story has some interesting event reaching for you, or suspense calling you, or eloquent and interesting dialogue from the narrator to make you feel like a part of the story. This is a book that is well written, with some funny moments and insightful narration. But at the end of the book, you are left feeling that the story was kind of lame and that a lot of it was superfluous to the "moral" of the story. In essence, the only thing that does happen that is satisfying is the "coming of age" at the last page of the book. All the preceding pages are more like an interesting story that your friend tells you and that you listen to carefully because it's just one more unique glimpse of an aspect of humanity through a person you are in turn getting to know better; but at the end of the storytelling you're pretty much disatisfied with what it actually provided YOU with, what new or interesting things YOU learned, besides just knowing the story teller more intimately.

Essentially, the book is well written and funny and crazy through out, interesting enough to read, but not interesting enough to think about afterwards. It's like a song that plays well, but ends on a weird note that makes you forget it's marvelousness.

Also, the whole thing is just WAY too focused on sexuality, and although the author DOES do a good job of emulating the thoughts of a sexually developing teenage girl, the ratio of sexual to non-sexual thought is just ridiculous. There isn't a person in the book who isn't in it with some sexual twist, even people in dreams the narrator has. That part was just plain old lame. Like a young attractive girl would think of every single male she interacts with in some sexual sense. It's ridiculous. Especially when it comes to the fat guy. puhleeze. At times it seems like the author is playing out some strange fantasy he has about what a young girl might think about. And though his insticts are right about her view of the world, he sexualizes everything to the point of being just plain silly, even if he does write the story eloquently.

I agree with all of the other positive reviews that this is an entertaining and engrossing story of a girl's summer spent reaching out to explore life outside her religious "Colony." She takes an offbeat job, forms probably unsanctioned relationships in unusual combinations, and stretches and probes her existing relationships with Colony hierarchy, family, and girl friends.

I disagree with other reviewers, though. I could tell immediately the author was male, even though the main character and voice are female. There is definitely a haze covering the story of a man imagining what a girl in this situation would be thinking, and parts of the story seemd less than authentic, because of this.

However, I thought the head Colony honcho, Gordon, was great. He acts out his own skewed but somehow charming theology and thus leads by example. Deciphering his relationship with Eve is one of the skillfully handled challenges this book offers.

All in all, there's plenty of good stuff in this book to make you wish it went on longer.