Not at all. I was surprised when I met the girls who were involved in the murder of Reena Virk. I expected them to be more like the fictional “bad girls” of my imagination, but they were utterly different. They weren’t outcasts or misfits. They weren’t angry at the injustice or rules of their society. They were pretty and popular, very conformist and typical, yet they stole cars and wanted to be gangsters and engaged in this ruthless violence. I really had to work hard to figure out who they were, where they were coming from, because I’d definitely never known girls like that before.

The Torn Skirt has very passionate, devoted readers—there are websites with songs and poems written in honor of Sara and Justine. Were you surprised by this response? What type of fan letters do you receive?

I was surprised by the intensity of the reaction, but I think it’s because most books about teenage girls explore romance or fashion. This was a completely different kind of story. The letters are really moving and wonderful. Some are a little unsettling—one girl wrote lines of the book around the walls of her detox center; another copied out the entire book into her notebook because she had to return her copy to the library.

Do you think the Internet has changed life for teenage girls?

I’m sure it’s allowed a certain type of creative loner to become much more creative and less alone. There’s now an immediate access to so many people who share your interests or peculiarities, an access to subcultures, blogs, conversations, diaries. It must be incredibly liberating, if you’re stranded in a small town. Perhaps five years from now, the whole notion of being an outsider will be obsolete.

“Some [of the fan letters] are a little unsettling—one girl wrote lines of the book around the walls of her detox center; another copied out the entire book into her notebook because she had to return her copy to the library.”

Read on

Author’s Picks
Some Other Heroines

Mona from the film Vagabond (1985)

This film is so unsettling, beautiful, and evocative. When I first saw it, the character of Mona was unlike any young woman I’d ever seen in cinema, and I loved the way her story unfolded, without judgment and in a jagged, restless manner. According to the director, Agnès Varda, it is “more than just Mona who always eludes us, who is too reserved, too closed; the film addresses ‘the Mona effect’ on those she came in contact with and inevitably affected. She is someone who forces others to react and adjust themselves in relation to her.”

Annie from the film Foxes (1980)

Cherie Currie, of the seventies all-girl band the Runaways, plays Annie, a doomed, bleached-blonde Los Angeles girl, and her performance is so searing that everyone else in the movie, even Jodie Foster, comes across as rather false and silly. Currie captures the authentic sadness of “bad girls” who aren’t really bad but accept their fate as if they were. I wanted to explore and capture this sadness more through the character of China.