Kilimnik’s paintings are a fortunate alternative to the images of teenage girls in magazines. She’s interested in beauty, even obsessed with beauty, but her drawings and paintings don’t deaden or cheapen the subjects. Instead, the girls have the quality of heroines in fairy tales—regal, dreamlike, likely to face down disguised wolves or other masquerades.

Further Reading

Selected by Rebecca Godfrey

Voyage in the Dark, Jean Rhys

La Bâtarde, Violette Leduc

Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson

Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter

The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, Elizabeth Smart

The Road Past Altamont, Gabrielle Roy

Rain, Kirsty Gunn

Black Tickets, Jayne Anne Phillips

The Ravishing of Lol Stein, Marguerite Duras

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to my family, Karen Hanson, Iris Tupholme, Felicia Quon, Nikola Scott, Dan Conaway, Emma Parry, Byrd Leavell, Janet Johnson, Heather McGowan, Juliette Consigny, Fi Campbell, Michael Turner, Patrick Li, Eli Langer, Jeff Rogers, Louise Dennys, Alex M., Dean M., Julian M., Jesse Jr., and ever for J. C.

PRAISE FOR
The Torn Skirt

“As malignant and addictive as a cigarette.”

—Erika Krouse, New York Times Book Review

“Imagine William S. Burroughs as a young writer with a social conscience and you have Rebecca Godfrey…. The Torn Skirt is an exhilarating, surreal, and dreamlike trip through the passionate heart.”

—Globe and Mail (Toronto)

“I loved and believed the narrative of a sixteen-year-old mind—immature, abandoned, and yet exploding. It came from a heartfelt and true perception, an authentic writer’s desire. Which made it rock.”

—Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth

“A compressed and graceful book…. A gorgeously choreographed ballet of full-tilt, reckless passion. A tough yet lyrical, dreamlike rush.”

—Oregonian

“I loved this book…. I can’t sleep because I just keep thinking about it.”

—Jane

“It’s a rare occasion when an author actually captures the scared-but-tough teenage girl who goes through all these dark things.”

—Vice

“Rips apart conventional wisdom…. Certain to alter the way we envision contemporary literature.”

—Joanna Smith Rakoff, Shout magazine

“Evokes a miasma of memory as narrator/antihero Sara lives that certain North American adolescence of isolation, rebellion, and the first opening of the heart that leads to rending betrayal.”

—Seattle Weekly

“Godfrey writes with cool clarity and control that belie the out-of-control nature of the story itself. Copies will be passed from hand to hand in hallways, underlined in ink, defaced with graffiti.”

—Vancouver Sun

Also by Rebecca Godfrey

Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

Copyright

Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous, reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division. Copyright © 1971 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

“Ace of Spades,” by Ian F. Kilminster, Edward A. Clark © Motor Music, Ltd., administered by WB Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014.