A Real Emotional Girl: A Memoir of Love and Loss

by Tanya Chernov

A Real Emotional Girl tells the true story of young Tanya, growing up in the wonderland of her family’s summer camp. At sixteen, this idyllic life is interrupted when she must face her father’s sudden illness. Tanya, her mother, and two brothers find themselves cramped in a tiny cabin in a tiny town in northern Wisconsin in the dead of winter. There they wait for her father to die of cancer. Separated from friends and civilization, Tanya has only her fears and uncertainty for company.At the age of twenty, Tanya loses a man who was not only her father but a surrogate father to thousands. Richard Chernov was a man who shared himself, humor and all, with just about everyone who would let him. And with this same unflagging commitment and passion, Tanya shares her struggles and the blessings she finds in them. Her memoir is a complex amalgam of human strength and fragility, which creates an inimitable coming-of-age story. This is a story of family and pain, of survival and growing up, and ultimately of love. For anyone who has ever experienced loss, A Real Emotional Girl offers a glimpse, provocative in its raw honesty, into the nature of grief and the positive transformation that can follow.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

337 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2012

About the author

Tanya Chernov grew up splitting her time between Milwaukee, Tucson, and a small town in Northern Wisconsin where her family owns and operates an all-girl’s summer camp. Tanya earned her BA in English from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington and holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts: Whidbey Writers Workshop. She has studied under David Wagoner, Marvin Bell, Carolyne Wright, and Hans Ostrom. She is an active member of the Richard Hugo House and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Her writing has been published all over the literary map and across genres, ranging from experimental forms to formal verse, from literary narratives to imaginative farces.

A Pushcart Poetry Prize nominee and guest editor for COLUMBIAKids Magazine, she currently serves as the poetry and translations editor for the Los Angeles Review. Tanya lives and writes in Seattle with her dog, Mona, though roots of her heart remain firmly planted in Wisconsin. Go Packers.

Reviews

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

We live in the era of novelized memoirs. Dry. Mentor. Me Talk Pretty One Day. Eat, Pray, Love. An account of the Holocaust is really the story of love between a mother and daughter. A story about the 1916 World Series is also about the close of a generation's ability to know itself. A road trip across America is a snapshot of the modernization of consciousness. Everywhere there is crosscut; nothing is ever one thing. Except here. Chernov's memoir is a different object. A genuine article. Missing here is subtext, and ulterior literary motives. Gone are the over-crafted sentences of a novelist who derailed into autobiography. Yes, this would be a great read for anyone young who has lost a loved one to cancer, but above all this book reminded me of secretly reading my sister's diary. A raw look into a young woman's mentality as she stumbles through the most pivotal moments of her life thus far. It seeps truth. There is an honest, literary guilelessness that makes this story hit home. With movies and books and other experiences, we often pay much more for just a fraction of the realness and humanity in this book.

[Leslie Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A REAL EMOTIONAL GIRL is a story of love, loss, and healing following the death of a beloved father.

Author, Tanya Chernov takes us on an unforgettable journey in her first book, a memoir in which we travel from Tucson, Arizon to northern Wisconsin (and back again) with her family as they maintain/manage a summer camp for girls.

Richard Chernov is the face of camp in every which way--his message, his energy, and his heart reside at this camp where young girls are taught self-actualization, independence, survivial and wilderness skills. In fact, they love Mr. Chernov as if he were their own father.

When he becomes ill, a mass is detected, the energy and weight slough off his body, the family maintains that he is "just fine," but they know better--and so do we. His daughter--the author takes us along on those impossibly long and tedious days of hospitalizations, hospice, death and more. Woven along the way are insights from a teenager experiencing a coming of age, disbelief in mortality, extreme grief, college, and the hard times--drugs and alcohol--to ease the pain.

Written with such depth and aptitute, the language almost lyrical at times, Tanya Chernov emerges stronger, better adjusted, and most importantly--healed. A writer with edge and depth, this touching account of her father's illness will resonate with anyone who has grieved the loss of a loved one.

[Jeri Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite all that is working in this memoir, in the end, it left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, Chernov explores cancer’s impact in clear prose that draws readers in with its emotional balance. On the other hand, a good deal of material in the book struck me as being a bit repetitious.

There is no doubt in my mind that Chernov has a great writing career ahead of her.So many choices go into how to render the truth in book form. In a way, I suppose I feel like a monster for not giving this powerful story at least four stars, but in the end, I came away merely liking it. The subject matter is powerful, but the writing could be tighter.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having been a camper and counselor at this camp, Tanya's story resonates particularly well with me. I recall learning about Dick's death and being not only shocked that such a vigorous man at such a young age could succumb to this disease, but also that someone who did serve as a surrogate father to so many girls, myself included, was just gone. Tanya's story opened my eyes to how she must have felt sharing her dad with all of us, in sickness and in health. But I also appreciated learning more about the tragedy that befell a family I really loved.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.6
It was a good book and I recommend it to anyone who has lost a loved one. She told the story of what she went through and how she felt with enough realism, humor and honesty to make this a very good read. She did overuse the term halcyon a bit tho!