📖Book Review ~ Life’s Short, Talk Fast : Edited by Ann Hood

Dialogue Books
14 November 2024

Thanks to Midas for my copy of this book

Gilmore Girls hit our screens in 2000 and has been our autumn obsession ever since. Featuring iconic fall fashion, seasonal festivities, and countless cosy coffeehouse meetups, there's a reason that Vogue calls Gilmore Girls 'the quintessential autumn girl show'.

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 town of Stars Hollow. To many, it is not only a classic comfort show, but a lifestyle, having even been called ‘a religion’. It is no surprise therefore that, years later, we're still head over heels with Stars Hollow.

More than twenty years after its release, Gilmore Girls has become one of the most-streamed TV shows, ever. Now, fans have the chance to rediscover the world of Lorelai and Rory in new form. Life’s Short, Talk Fast is an anthology as intimate and quick-witted as Gilmore Girls itself, in which bestselling author Ann Hood invites fifteen writers to investigate their personal relationships to the show, reintroducing readers to the twinkle lights and movie nights that so captivate audiences. 

UK-based authors Freya North and Yassmin Abdel-Magied explore how the show illuminated and explored their relationships with their own family members. Freya discusses how it led her to form a deeper connection with her 21-year-old son, who discovered the show in his final year of university. Yasmin reflects on the difficult and often unclear boundaries between mothers and daughters illuminated in the mother-daughter dynamics between Emily, Lorelai, and Rory. Nina de Gramont offers a comic ode to the unreality of the Stars Hollow world, hinged on the impossible vastness of Lorelai Gilmore’s coat collection (which she compares to Carrie Bradshaw’s shoe collection). 

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.

📖 My Review..

A few years ago I watched, over the space of a few weeks, the entire Gilmore Girls series on Netflix and absolutely fell in love with mother-daughter combo, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore and even developed a soft spot for Lorelai’s mother, Emily. At the time of watching the series I didn’t look into it any deeper than it being an entertaining watch on a steaming channel. I could comfortably watch two or three episodes, at a time, nicely ensconced in the cosiness of Stars Hollow and living life vicariously with this gentle show with its witty dialogue and complex relationships.

Fifteen writers have contributed to this anthology and as they share their personal relationships with the show so you begin to understand the lure of its appeal. With chapters covering diverse subjects, it’s an easy book to dip into and out of, discovering fascinating snippets along the way, and if you are familiar with the series will have you nodding in agreement. I particularly enjoyed Many Coats of Many Colours by Nina de Gramont which discusses cash strapped Lorelai’s penchant for exquisite coats of many colours. It made me smile ‘We live once, it’s cold outside’.  Freya North’s chapter Gilmore Girls-and Boys. It’s a Mother-Son Thing was particularly enlightening as by watching some of Gilmore Girls together with her son gave them both a deeper understanding of their mother-son relationship.

Life’s Short, Talk Fast looks really closely at the phenomenon of Gilmore Girls and the effects it had not just on a TV streaming public but also on parent-child relationships going forward into another generation. I think we underestimate the power of popular culture at our peril and this book goes some way into explaining its relevance twenty four years since its inception.  From its pretty cover to the enlightenment of its contents I found much to enjoy in Life’s Short, Talk Fast. It’s given me an appetite to revisit Stars Hollow again and discover the charm and hidden meanings to be found in Gilmore Girls. 

About Ann Hood

Ann Hood is the author of over a dozen novels, including the bestsellers The Knitting Circle, The Obituary Writer, The Book That Matters Most, Fly Girl and Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine; and several memoirs, including the bestsellers Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love and Food and Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, which was named one of the top ten books of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island and New York.

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