Not that Kind of Girl

I have a weird relationship with memoirs. The memoirs I have read and loved in recent years recently are Bossypants, Girl With a Lower back Tatto and Scrappy Little Nobody. This one seems to be in a similar vein: comic feminism that isn't afraid to get raunchy.

I found it very difficult to put down this book and loved Lena Dunham's writing style.

The things that I struggled with were not in the reading of the memoir as much as in researching more about the writer. The account that she had about being raped was fabricated. As I am playing around with some life stories there is the issue on how to tell the truth. However downright lying about sexual assault is something I take serious issue with in a culture where women need to be taken more seriously as victims. To make matters worse on this issue Dunham stated that when someone in the cast of her HBO show Girls said that the producer of the show practiced sexual misconduct that it was one of the rare cases where the allegations were false.

For someone who protrays a very strong feminist stance in her memoir she makes claims that actually hurt a more feminist agenda.

While I know that she is a very controversial person I struggle with the fact that her fresh voice does not match her actions. Would she have been better casting this book as a series of humorous short stories? If I did not research the news about her would I have been able to get more out of her book?
How much does the person in real life need to match the person she casts herself to be in the book?

I do know that her writing style is courageous and brilliant. I just think I would take her work more seriously if it was fiction knowing what I know about her now. But these are issues that I often grapple with in my attempts to read memoir.