The Torn Skirt
by Rebecca Godfrey
List Price: $11.95
Pages: 208
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0060094850
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Rebecca Godfrey was born in Canada but lives in New York City. She has written for Detour, Index, and other magazines. She holds an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence. This is her first novel.
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Q: Can you talk about the role gender plays in The Torn Skirt? For instance: Sara truly loves her father, despite his frailties and faults. To what extent does Sara's resilience arise from his absence, from her having nothing to fall back on?
RG: A lot of books about women focus on the domestic or romance, and I wanted to explore more the ways women seek out and find danger or trouble, rather than safety or security. As for Sara's father, he's important because he raised her to be brave, as someone who doesn't need to be sheltered or brought up like a little JonBenet. Things get complicated for him -- for both of them -- when she turns sixteen, and starts discovering her own sexuality and anger; which means they can no longer have the same kind of camaraderie they had previously. Even though he's not the typical Good Father, he gave her strength by raising her to question things, to not worry about what others think.
Q: Would you say that the strength of the women in your book has anything to do with some sort of innate sense that women need to bond together to overcome the pitfalls of the male world?
RG: It's not so much as about "bonding together," but the girls in the book live in a world where there aren't any real mothers, literally and metaphorically. It's like when you see polls that they give young women and they ask them who their heroes are, and they answer: "Marilyn Monroe" or "Madonna." Those are the kind of women our culture values or presents as ideal. But Sara and the girls she befriends aren't into the popular heroes; they're all looking for, or becoming, their own kind of heroes and guides.
Q: Sara mocks her high school reading material (Lord Jim, Lord of the Rings) and bemoans the ending of Go Ask Alice ("Why did girls have to always die in the end?"). What books would you recommend to Sara beyond the world of Victoria -- beyond Justine -- who might Sara's role models be?
RG: When I was Sara's age, I was fascinated by women like Edie Sedgwick and Sylvia Plath. I don't know why so many young girls are into those self-destructive icons. I think girls like Sara found their role models later. In the late 80's, there were a lot of women in bands, like Debbie Harry or Patti Smith who were inspiring -- they were sexy and disruptive, but creative and forceful too. There's a hundred books she could read -- The Bluest Eye, Bastard Out of Carolina, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Heart is A Lonely Hunter, etc.
Q: You describe life on the streets so vividly, from the camaraderie that develops amongst fellow runaways to their unrelenting hope for someday finding salvation amongst their lost families. How did you research the gritty side of life on the street?
RG: I knew a lot about the street life just from growing up there and hanging around downtown. Some of the characters are based on kind of legendary girls that everyone talked about or knew, and The Red Zone is a real term that was too perfect not to use. There really was an Empress Hotel and a King's Hotel, even though those names are so archetypal that they sound invented. As far as research, I went to the juvenile detention center and some trials and just got a sense of what the practical reality is like for "criminals." But mostly, I imagined and invented that world, or underworld, and my version is probably less gritty than the truth. I wanted Sara's world to have a heightened beauty so as to be like the surreal places heroines find in fairy tales.
Q: Seamus' biggest fault is he feels too much. You wrote: "'Don't care,' Sara wanted to tell him. 'Just shrug your shoulders. Don't love your daughter so much. Don't be moved by scenery.'" The reader really feels for both Sara and Seamus here. Did you want the reader to feel Sara's same compassion towards Seamus, so as not to judge him too harshly for abandoning his teenage daughter?
RG: I was interested in that dilemma. What happens when you feel too much? What happens when you don't feel enough? It's something that's explored through every situation she gets into. She's scared by vulnerability which she sees as weakness. She wants to be tough because she wants to survive. But she keeps having these eruptions of feelings, of empathy, and that's her conflict.
Q: Which scene in the book did you most enjoy writing? Which was the most painful?
RG: I enjoyed writing The Blue House chapter. It was fun to try to recreate that kind of drunken abandon, where everything is a little out of control and wild, and I wanted the reader to get caught up in her good time. The scene in The Red Room, where the girls cut themselves was difficult -- I've actually never been able to reread it.
Q: The color black is typically reserved for the bad guy, and white for the hero. Justine is dressed in a black widow dress and Sara in a white nurses uniform. Was the black and white imagery intentional? If so, what did you want to convey about each character?
RG: I wasn't really trying to convey anything, and I don't associate white with goodness or black with evil. When they find each other, on the last night, Justine can stay elusive, and almost slip into the darkness. Sara is more vivid. Also, I think the white fur coat is warm and protective for Sara; it's also a disguise; she's literally trying on another girl's identity. It's telling that when she offers China's coat to Justine, Justine drops it on the ground -- but readers can interpret that however they want.
Excerpted from The Torn Skirt © Copyright 2012 by Rebecca Godfrey. Reprinted with permission by HarperPerennial. All rights reserved.
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