The Torn Skirt

Wherever she was running, I knew it wasn't to a collapsing home with a pothead father or into the bushes with the burnout boys. Watching her run, I thought, down is somewhere.

Sara is living in Victoria, British Colombia, a tourist destination full of cobbled streets and charm, but that's not her Victoria. Her Victoria is feeling trapped on an island, living with her father who has one foot (and then both feet) out the door and spending her school hours hanging out in the woods behind the high school with the burnout boys. When the boys recount what they did to a girl in her class, Sara abandons them and soon school and her empty house altogether, sort of looking for a girl she saw once, running with a torn skirt, mostly just hanging show more out, getting into deeper and deeper trouble and pretending that she's cool, she's fine, she's about to turn her life around.

The Torn Skirt is by Canadian author Rebecca Godfrey, a novel that preceded Under the Bridge. Written in 2001 and set in the 1980s, this is a world where sexual assault is shrugged off and Go Ask Alice is more familiar than any textbook. Godfrey is a talented author, giving Sara a voice that is at once naive and street smart, young and clever.

I'm sure he was trying to help when he called the Street Outreach worker, some gangly guy with Bible breath.

Sara lets the reader know in the opening paragraphs that she's being questioned by the police, that something very bad has happened, but how she goes from being a high school student with an attitude to a suspect in a crime is the story told here. show less

This novel tells the story of a lost teenager named Sara Shaw whose mother chose to stay in a commune, leaving her hippy father to raise her. Sara isn’t sure where she fits in - at home or at school. She spent her afternoons with the burnout boys until they do something horrible to a classmate that she cannot forgive or stop thinking about. She doesn’t understand her father any more than he understands her. After finding her in a compromising position in the garden, he chooses to leave her at home to live by herself while he goes off to live out his crazy hippy dream. Alone, Sara skips school and that is when she first sees Justine, the girl with the torn skirt who seems to have it all together. Sara’s decision to find her leads show more her down a path that ultimately ends in personal disaster.

Rebecca Godfrey is a gifted author. Her writing made Sara so real and Justine so intriguing. She gave Sara flashes of hope with her interest and study in nursing while, in the context of the larger decisions she was making, illustrating her despair. Sara tells her story from her memory as her life’s tragic circumstances are unfolding. Godfrey’s stylistic choices with the use of quotation marks emphasizes how unreliable her story is, whether that be by choice or due to drug use. Still, Godfrey is honest about who Sara is, even when Sara may not be honest herself

The Torn Skirt takes place in the 80s and it most definitely has that feel. I was interested in Sara and her story from the very beginning and that held up all the way through until the end. If you’ve ever known a lost teenager or if you were one yourself, you can relate to Sara and the impact that lack of direction and one bad decision can have on a young life. You will remember how things are usually not what they seem. You will recognize that those who seem confident in who they are and where they are going often are more lost than you are.

The Torn Skirt, which is Rebecca Godfrey’s first novel, was published in 2001. I am eagerly waiting for her next.

http://literatehousewife.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/106-the-torn-skirt/ show less

"The Torn Skirt" seems to have lots of fans, and there are some big names among them. Both Mary Gaitskill and Thurston Moore blurbed the book, which must have been like hitting the jackpot in this particular mini-genre, that genre being teen-in-trouble verité. But this one just does not work for me. It's not hard to see why our protagonist would have a troubled life -- her mother is physically absent, her father -- thanks to lots and lots of terrific BC kind -- is largely mentally absent. She hangs out with a bunch of stoners at her high school, where she mostly feels invisible and driftless. When she hears that something shockingly terrible has happened to someone she knows, she starts to fall apart completely.

There's nothing exactly show more unlikely about this, in that awful things happen every day, but Sara seems to go from a normal enough, if rather unhappy teen girl to a multiple felon in about the space of ten days. And while I'm sure that these sorts of psychotic breaks have happened before, Godfrey's not really a strong enough writer to give the reader a satisfying sense of who Sara might have been before these traumatizing events took place or to capture the white-hot fury she feels when she's out on the street or caught up in the justice system. To her credit, she's a perceptive enough writer to give Sara the short time horizon that's common to many teens, and the sense of affection and admiration Sara feels for some of the daring and resourceful girls she befriends on the streets seems realistic enough. She captures her protagonist's free-floating teenage anomie well, and, to her credit, doesn't turn way from tough subjects, which may satisfy those who picked up "The Torn Skirt" looking for an exploitative thrill or two. But especially since the author successfully captures her character's teenage naivete -- heck, even Sara herself knows that others think her naive -- there is something rather unlikely about the sheer speed of her descent. "The Torn Skirt" moves much too fast, is too simply written, and has too many blank spaces to leave much of an impression, though I may only be speaking for myself here.

Readers specifically interested in the experiences of teen girls in tough situations may like this one, and, in its way, it serves as a love note -- or perhaps a poison pen letter -- to the foggy gray town that is Regina, British Columbia. But I couldn't bring myself to give it more than two stars. I'd recommend trying Heather O'Neill's "Lullabies for Little Criminals," which tells a similar story much better, although my northern friends should be advised that it's set in Canada's eastern provinces. show less

this is my favourite book, period. if you've ever felt lost with a feverish pull towards rooftop freedom, you will absolutely love this book. fast-paced and with lyrical prose it will capture your heart.

i definitely did not enjoy the ending of this. and at times i thought it was outrageous and completely unbelievable. it was like watching a bad lifetime movie only much better written.

Liked this well enough but it hasn't really stood out to me years later. Donating.

Sara's sick of her small town and her life there. Things don't really get interesting for her until a chance encounter with an outlaw girl named Justine which leads Sara into the underground world of drug deals, junkies, and prostitutes.