‘Small Town Girls’ review: Jane Anne Phillips looks back

By Lauren Emily Whalen

Everyone comes from somewhere and “somewhere” can be complicated. No one knows this better, perhaps, than author Jayne Anne Phillips of Buckhannon, West Virginia. The Pulitzer Prize-winner’s latest, Small Town Girls, is a powerful essay collection about Phillips’ personal “somewhere”, the tiny Appalachian town she left physically but never in spirit.

It’s telling that the title is plural, and that Phillips dedicates the book to “all the small town girls: those who left, and those who stayed behind.” Phillips departed as a young woman, in search of higher education, romantic intrigue, and a writing career, while her schoolteacher mother stayed, earned her PhD, and divorced Jayne’s father in the 1970s when such decisions were rare.

From beauty shops to communal living

Phillips’ essays range from a primer on West Virginia history, including the notorious multigenerational feud of the Hatfield and McCoy families, to remembrances of her rural childhood, including drying dishes while learning local gossip, Friday nights when football was (literally) the only game in town, and visits to the beauty shop with her mother. “I watched the women who were trimmed and permed and crimped,” she writes, ”One afternoon a week in their buffeted lives, someone took care of them.”

The reader follows Phillips out of West Virginia as well, as she explores possibilities beyond Buckhannon through free-spirited communal living (including a magnetic but severely mentally ill roommate), ill-fated love affairs, and the dog that will ultimately change her.

Though Phillips’ written experience is specific, the themes of golden nostalgia coupled with an itch to find ourselves in the great big world is universal among the small town girls.

As a small-town girl myself, I can relate to the inevitable choice we all face: go, or stay. I went. Phillips’ essays hit the sweet spot of golden-tinged nostalgia and gritty reality, celebrating Appalachia from the perspective of someone who lived it and will always value the lessons learned.