The Torn Skirt

by Rebecca Godfrey

At Mt. Douglas (a.k.a. Mt. Drug) High, all the girls have feathered hair, and the sweet scent of Love's Baby Soft can't hide the musk of raw teenage anger, apathy, and desire. Sara Shaw is a girl full of fever and longing, a girl looking for something risky, something real. Her only possible salvation comes in the willowy form of the mysterious Justine, the outlaw girl in the torn skirt. The search for Justine will lead Sara on a daring odyssey into an underworld of hookers and johns, junkies and thieves, runaway girls and skater boys, and, ultimately, into a violent tragedy.

Genres: Fiction, Young Adult, Coming Of Age, Realistic Fiction, Contemporary, Womens, Mental Health

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2001

Reviews

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a beautiful book. I loved its originality and storyline, I loved everything. It really inspired me as a writer because of how different the author wrote it, and it made me realize that books don't necessarily have to be written a certain way.

This book is a work of art, it's poetry, it's delightful, and moving. If you haven't read it, do so.

[Lola · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though i finished this novel some weeks ago, i had mixed feelings about its significance. At some times it was hard for me to suspend my disbelief in regards to some of the situations the narrator got herself into, and at other times i just wanted to roll my eyes becasue of her blatant stupidity passed off as teenage confusion and naiveté by the author.

Sara was not naive, in fact, she mentions several times that all she wanted to do was "fuck it all up." And that sums up my qualm with the entire novel. I couldn't help but feel that the author's intention was to make it seem as if Sara winded up in these situations by accident or due to lack of proper guidance, when in fact Sara's narration suggested that she was looking for trouble. She was looking for that grungy, raw, unapologetic, unaffected way of life. She was so fascinated by Justine's untamed wildness that she fashioned a life for herself in the same likeness while having conflicting emotions all the while.

That aside, her relationship with her father and the dissolution of it was heartbreakingly hard to read, i loved the characters of the lost girls she wanted to, but couldn't quite emulate. Although i feel like some of the story was contrived, what did inspire me was Godfrey's writing. There was a simplictic honesty in Sara's narration (even if i couldn't quite believe it all) that made me want to get out a notebook and write my life like that.

So the only reason that i gave it two stars was because it wasn't made clear or written between the lines why someone whose life was so unsable and desperate for connection would continually search for more instability, her explaintions, although well written were just not convincing enough for me.

[Writer's Relief · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is no tired, typical young adult novel filled with teen angst. While the protagonist is a sixteen-year-old girl struggling to find her place in a hostile environment, Godfrey’s storytelling goes far beyond plot. Books about teenage girls dealing with pressures of authority, peers, sex, drugs, etc. are a dime a dozen. But rather than relying on a shocking plot to compel her audience, Godfrey digs deeper to present that tired story from a different perspective. Sara Shaw, the main character and narrator, is neither whiny nor emotional. Like Caulfield, she tells us what she sees, feels, and experiences by removing herself and letting the audience figure it out for themselves. Instead of whining that she is scared and abandoned, searching for someone to trust and love, she tells us coldly and mechanically of the hooker she has just become friends with: “…I couldn’t leave China in a room where men knocked on her door, never knowing, never caring, never asking about the maps she drew and saved. Call her what you want. She was the first girl to befriend me, and I would have done anything for her.” She explores an underworld of drugs, prostitution, people being used and exploited and thrown away, but manages to remain on the outskirts, seemingly untouched. But again, it is that hard shell of hers that gives away how damaged she already is.

My first love being poetry, this novel is in my top five favorite books of all time for Godfrey’s exquisite talent for language. With sentences as lovely as, “Lose the necessary innocence. And what good was it anyway? It was just like a library card or a set of spare keys, something small you lose and then realize you never used…I envisioned innocence as a small trinket falling out of the King’s Hotel and down onto the rainswept streets.” The use of subtle but compelling internal rhyme and rhythm, assonance, and alliteration in her prose has led to my rereading the book about a dozen times. Even though I’ve memorized the plot by now, the pleasure I find in the structure and art of Godfrey’s language allows me to enjoy the book again and again the same way a favorite poem can be read infinitely, deepening the reader’s appreciation with each reading. I recommend this book to anyone who loves the art of language, even if you don’t love young adult novels.

[wewerb0rntodie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved how realistic and depressing this book was

[Carrie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am usually a fan of YA, and I also tend to like books that focus on characters on a downward spiral of drugs, drinking, mental health, etc. I did not enjoy this book. I never felt like I got to know the main character, and therefore never really understood some of her choices. Some of the other characters were stereotypes, although in some of the situations it could work since Sara knows some of these people for a short period of time. It was slow, and tawdry in a surprisingly boring manner. A student in my school requested that we get this book. While I have no problem with putting a book with a risque subject matter in the library if it is well written and realistic, this one will be moving on to the used book store.

[Kaitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite book by far. It explores teen angst much like Catcher in the Rye, good imagery and very interesting Characters. Sarah possesess key personality traights that are very relatable to alot of teens or at least to the extent that they can identify with her feelings at one time in their lives. I think that many teens have felt at some point in their lives "fuck it!" and want to give up. Though this is not an original thought in literature it was done in a very refreshing way. I may have some attachments because I happen to live in the place where the book was set. I loved that when Sarah referred to specific places I knew exactly what she was talking about. If your a like me, once you read a book you get a picture of the setting in your head so it was interesting to not have to imagine every setting. Although as a reference since the book takes place in the 1980's not all buildings are standing. Ming's corner store is gone, we have a restaurant called Ming's but not in the same location or any reference to the corner store with the same name. Also the King's hotel is no longer here to my knowledge. But as far as China Town being just a street and weird cobblestone downtown areas, those are still here today. "Ye olde England" is still as true today as it was then. One of the best Authors and best reads, a great escape from the typical teen books for girls and their fickle problems, like the popular boy not liking them, and the whole story of it. Good for anyone who is or was a teenager who didn't make the cut in highschool.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read both of Rebecca Godfrey's books and I think what is most interesting about her is the way she is able to capture an adolescent emotional state of being. It makes sense, as her other book (which I think is better than this one) is a true crime story about a group of 14 year olds that killed a classmate. It is really well put together. I'd say the writing style is somewhat like Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood". Both books, the nonfiction and the fiction, are about the town she grew up in so there is this sense that she shares something biographically with them. She tries to capture the essence of the place and what it is like to be "trapped" there as a young person. If you read only one of her books though, I'd go with "Under the Bridge".

FYI - as I write any reviews, I tend to rate books high because I feel like I always get something out of them, and if it's crap I generally won't make it through.

[Claudia Cutter · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is really exciting. the writing is very good, too, strong imagery and a lot of cool people. one of the lines i especially liked was "Broken locks and bruised knees and borrowed lipgloss and rain on the streets." also, "shards of glass fell down like lacerated rain", just really good sentences like that which were very descriptive and beautiful. i think china/alice the prostitute was my favorite character and i understand why sara was so fascinated with her and justine, because they seemed to live on the edge and seemed to be having more freedom and fun than her. although all these things that happen to the main character, sara, seem so crazy and impossible she is so disbelieving of it all, making all the experiences much more shocking and real than if it had just been a bunch of crazy stuff that was just too unbelievable to really shock anyone at all, like i think gossip girl is. anyways, read this book, its exciting and thought-provoking and all that jazz.

[ari · Rating 3 out of 5]

sharp & depressing read about an angsty teen getting in trouble. I struggled with the writing style but really enjoyed the MC.

[_giovannard · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was okay. It has a good story line but, things just happened way to quickly and at times I found myself wondering "WHAT JUST HAPPENED!?", "WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN!?" or "OH NO....THAT DID NOT JUST HAPPEN!!" If it was much slower, I think I would have enjoyed it more. Also there were some things that could have been left out. Some of the events that took place in this book were a little to shocking.

Sometimes I felt that she was a bit dumb for her age, like how she didnt know the meanings of some very easy words. I dont know if she was just being a smart ass or if she genuinely just had no idea about things.

She made some of the worse decisions EVER! To me she was sticking up for people who she barely knew and would probably throw her under the bus if the tables were turned. The ending really made me mad. I dont think Ive ever been as disappointed with a books ending as I am with this one.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

another five star read and now I’m conflicted because I think that THIS may now be my favourite book of the year.

Absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking and I adore Sara so much. Hard to read at times but I think that added to the beauty of the story.

[isabella · Rating 2 out of 5]

i really tried to like this book but i just felt like it was very cyclical, especially in terms of the narrator.

[Lexi · Rating 1 out of 5]

waste of time i just wanted it to end

[Peaches · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Why are the people who would understand you, why are they far away, just faces on record covers and magazines?" (142).
This book was so bad that less than 50 pages in, I considered quitting, saw that it was under 200 pages total and thought I might as well suffer through it, then wasted a week of my life forcing myself to do so. It's clear that Godfrey was upset with the popularity of Go Ask Alice and thought she could do better, which she could not. This book makes the over-the-top GAA look like the next great American novel.
I won't waste too much time on the plot, but Sara is a former child of a cult who is being investigated for murder in the present, reminisces about being traumatized when her bf gang raped another girl and sent her in a spiral of chasing drugs, prostitutes, and her lost mom (who is apparently still in the cult?). I'm sure it's meant to be a commentary on what society does to women and how easy it is to try to focus on other people's issues than your own, but it's just so incredibly tedious. It's not that Sara is unlikable; she isn't even interesting enough to generate dislike from readers. Some of the side characters are interesting and it might have been engaging if they turned out to be figments of Sara's imagination, but there's nothing to base that off except my desperate desire for something more than dating references, dull prose, and an author who thinks writing about prostitutes automatically makes a book interesting.
I only read this book because I recently read one of the best books of my life, Mona Awad's Bunny and she said in an interview that she liked Godfrey's writing, but I can't fathom why.

I did like the "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, SHOOT IT" (8), but that was less than 10 pages in and it was all downhill from there!

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

An angsty and fast moving tale of a teenage girl as she journeys to the underworld of her sleepy town. The Torn Skirt successfully captures the desires of a lost and stranded personality during such a crucial time, but I'm still not sure how I feel about the experience.

Sara Shaw knows what she wants when she sees it. This "it" isn't tangible, it's a way of being. She wants to be seen and invisible at the same time. She wants to be tough. She wants to stand up to bullies. She's full of good intentions, and poor assumptions. She sees the sketchy world of sex workers, johns, and seedy drug fueled parties with rose-colored glasses only a teenager could have. As a reader, I can't say I loved the ride, even if I found it insightful and entertainingly different from my own experience.

As Sara continues to spiral, she can't stop romanticizing the pain and missteps of the people around her. As they continue to disappoint her, she asks herself why she accommodates actions that make her uncomfortable. She carries a lot of pain herself which she isn't capable of articulating. It only gets worse, and she refuses to learn. Somehow there is a cautionary aspect to her tale. Unlike Go Ask Alice, a story mentioned quite a few times in The Torn Skirt, Sara's desires are a reality to be reckoned with.

[Jonnie Comet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book based on its description on Amazon and found the description didn't come close to representing the power of this book. I wish I could just describe the ending because it entirely blew me away. But getting there is at least half the ride.

'I was born with a fever, but it seemed to subside for sixteen years.' With this iconic understatement Sara begins her struggle to describe her life in terms outsiders will understanding. Her weird, wild fascination with the wily girl in the dirty torn skirt who enters, influences and ultimately determines her life's course is so obsessively overwhelming that as the reader you are often just as confused as she is. But there is a richness and innate decency to Sara's character that slowly makes sense of it all; and as she arrives at the one great deed of her life (the climax) you are impressed by this most unlikely heroine and the effect she ends up having on the whole society round about her... for better and for worse.

[Stephen Conley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only reason i gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is because of the weak ending. After such a gut wrenching, fantastic tale, it just kind of fizzed out. Godfrey is a great writer in that among the moments of brilliance and the great lines, it's raw and almost amateurish. Sara is an incredibly sympathetic narrator. I felt bad for her entire situation, like she was a victim of her surroundings even though i don't really believe in that. The book is simultaneously stark, beautiful, and ugly. The scene where they snuck into the padded room at the hospital and cut themselves kept me reading well into the night. It's a chaotic and emotional read. Most of the background characters are interesting. The only one i didn't buy was perhaps the most important person, Justine. I didn't buy Sara's obsession with her and that was the catalyst of the whole story. Great book though.

[Kinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is one of my favourite books of all time. it's proof that young adult fiction can be beautiful, powerful, literary. it's one of those books that makes your blood boil and changes your life. after reading it, you walk around in a sort of fog, yet everything seems so clear. you feel like you know a secret that nobody else does, and you want to shake people and tell them to read this book and you beg them to let their blood boil, their fevers raise.
you have a fever with no cause. and you carry around a beaten-up copy of this book, so that you finally have an answer when someone asks, "why?"

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm rewriting my review- it was a bit harsh.

The Torn Skirt wasn't my favorite book, but it wasn't that bad. Yes, it was a bit slow and kinda boring. The ending was a disappointment and it wasn't very realistic-which it claimed to be. Anyhoo, I didn't like this book...but it wasn't a complete waste of time, I guess.

[Anissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

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

[Julia Rhea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scrappy.

I came across this book after listening to an episode of “So Many Damn Books” with Mona Awad. They discussed it in length on why it is one of her favorites she reads almost every year in the Springtime, so you know I had to check it out.

This book healed something in me, maybe it was reading something that I would’ve absolutely loved in high school. There are a lot of books I’ve been reading lately where I’ve thought, “I’m thankful I didn’t read this in high school.” But, this is a book that made me go, “I wish I DID read this in high school.”

Though it focuses on a teenage runaway (and it probably would’ve made me itchy to run in high school) and hits a lot of the same tropes in that field, the writing and prose is just… so good. There is an ongoing theme of “fever” with the main character that just hit so perfect at capturing the fire of adolescence. It didn’t feel like a cautionary tale written by scared mothers to push anti-drug propaganda (I’m looking at you, “Go Ask Alice.”) It just felt real. Not proclaiming “DON’T LET YOUR LIFE GO DOWN THIS ROAD!” It was purely just a look at where certain decisions led someone, a teenage girl.

While envisioning it in my mind, I saw it like the cinematography in “Trainspotting” or “Skins”.

One of those reads I was expecting to be “meh”, that I ended up adoring. It just hit a nerve that I wasn’t expecting, a familiarity (even though my youth was not at all like Sara’s). I need to get a physical copy so I can mark it up ASAP.

Also, as I said previously, they literally snort coke off the cover of “Go Ask Alice”. Like C’MON! THAT IS INCREDIBLE!

[Chanele · Rating 1 out of 5]

Meh in almost every way. Even though it was a short book, it was tedious to read. I generally don't mind unlikeable narrators, but Sara was both unlikeable and implausible. The writing style was annoying to read, trying way too hard to be edgy, cool, and different. The whole thing smacked of psuedo-intellectualism. Another book about a boring teenage girl who wants to watch the world burn. Even embracing that concept, this book made little sense.

[loralei · Rating 3 out of 5]

i’m super on the fence about this one, i think it was good there just wasn’t much of a plot and i know sometimes that works but in this case it made it a little confusing. on the other hand though i really enjoyed the feral and chaotic descent into madness and it read almost like a diary rather than a book which was a good touch.

[Dilia Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

realitätsnahes Storytelling, welches einen guten Einblick in die gestörte Psyche eines naiven Teenagers blicken lässt, dem die Gefahren um einen herum nicht immer sonderlich präsent sind

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Not my cup of tea.

[yvonne · Rating 3 out of 5]

this one is about a bored & longing teenage girl named Sara who comes across a girl named Justine that she found very interesting, and in her process of trying to look for her around town, she slowly fell into a depressing pit of self destruction, much like Justine’s.

i don't know what about this book i didn't like very much. i guess the beginning of the first chapter was just such a major turn off (idk why i kept reading anyway,, i just thought the author would make that plot bunny make sense somehow, but unfortunately no) and so many scenes were just so icky & uncomfortable & questionable? and i guess that was on purpose, to disturb the reader, but it just didn't come across that way. it came across as sloppy & an attempt to make things “edgy”.

i also didn't like the r-word theme that didn't even make that much sense because in the end the victim had a bad ending and the perpetrator was suddenly painted into this supposedly-better-character in sara’s life which just sukkcckss.

but i did like the writing style. in a story so depressing like this the kind of poetic-teenage-rustiness worked really well. i loved the interesting characters thrown into this book, the story, & most of all the idea of running after what a sad girl believes would bring color back to her bland, lifeless life. cuz if i ever meet an interesting girl with a torn skirt i might look everywhere for her too.

3.2/5

[Madeleine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Short Answer: Just read Girlbomb instead. You'll thank me.

This book tried to be edgy, without actually putting our protagonist through much. Most of her horror in a "Go Ask Alice" observation of the world, even making several disparaging references to that book.

There is genre that is very, very hard to do correctly, and that genre is the gritty coming-of-age tale of a well-off white girl on drugs.

No, this girl is not typically from extreme poverty, or abuse, or even struggling with her drug habits in the form of a desperate addiction. She's just kind of living on her own, just kind of on the run, just kind of doing drugs.

This is what I call a "Holden Caulfield Genre" because a lot of responsibility is places in the narrator if this book is going to be likable or not. This book fails me in that regard. It's one of those "Girl on Drugs" narrators, disgusted with people yet desperate for them.

I do not give a shit about Sarah. There's this great scene where, as she'd covering for her friend over a stabbing (Which totally happened. Her friend almost stabs a guy to death and she covers for her. Just the finally check on a list of things that made me hate this book) and she writes this moody diary of what went wrong, with lots of artsy run-on sentences, and both lawyer and judge "are not impressed"

That was my reaction the whole book. I wasn't impressed. I wasn't intrigued. I didn't give a fuck. I took my cue from Sarah and was not affected in the least by anything that was happening to her.

This is about a girl who sees another homeless girl, Justine, acting cool for like five minutes and begins to stalk/obsess over/try to imitate this girl despite knowing nothing about her or even speaking to her. She gets kicked out of school, hangs out with prostitutes, junkies, criminals, mourns her existence, despite one little thing: She is sixteen years old and her life really isn't all that bad.

Sarah isn't running from abuse, or overprotective parents, or crippling mental issues. She is described by her entire school as a frosty bitch and acts like no one understands her.

Sarah is that girl in your english class who wrote emo poetry and everyone fucking hated.

Justine, despite being in two scenes, is supposed to be a main character in this story. She stabs a guy for no reason. Sarah is grossed out by this guy and covers for Justine during the murder trial, Justine bolted after the incident and hadn't been found.

UGH.

Why. In God's name. Would she do that?

[Mark McKenna]

Warning: Spoilers below!


Written in 1980, "The Torn Skirt" is a dreamy, druggy stroll though a world peopled by drunks, druggies, rapists, losers and lost teens. Sara Shaw is 15, living with her dad (sporadically, as he is seldom there) getting high and spending time in the "Red Zone" a section of Vancouver where bars and prostitution flourish.

Sara spends the book in search of the mythic Justine, a girl who's famous in the Red Zone, mostly for being fucked up. In the beginning of "The Torn Skirt" the reader is told something has happened, something involving blood, violence and a knife. This is a picaresque novel, a series of adventures told in a haunting, bizarre, poetic style. Much of the cohesion comes from Sara gradually revealing the story of the knife and violence; what happened, and how it happened.

There's a lost quality in "The Torn Skirt" that was in vogue in the 80s, think: Girl Interrupted. Punk anomie. Author Rebecca Godfrey's writing is powerful, yet the story is so bleak I read it under duress, mostly to find out what was going to happen. Sections read like the end of "Steppenwolf" by Hesse, a great compliment, but the writing deserves it.

When Sara finally finds the mythic Justine a man named Dirk is stabbed. Dirk is a guy who Sara and another girl rolled for his money after going to a room to have sex with him in the beginning of the book. Justine does the stabbing; Sara takes the blame. At the end she escapes and runs into the fog of her poetic and lost future.

And the reader is left with what? I was not sure.

[Emily De · Rating 5 out of 5]

the audience to this book would be teenage girls that are the opposite of goody two shoes and girls who are good girls and are wanting to change that, that are looking for excitment like doing something risky and real. teenage girls into action.
this book grabbed my attention i never wanted to put it down. what i like about it the most it doesnt give you a happy ending, it stickes to reality. it has a lot of action in it, one thing happens after another. its sad and makes you realize that making little bad choices can lead down the wrong path and end end up at a dead end. i didnt relate to much to the character i,ve thought about doing soem of the bad choices she had done because being a good girl all the time get boring. but the difference it that she actually threw herself out there and took a risk i always hold myself back. o learned and always believed that the people you run into dont impact your life like most people believe, you do. at the end of the day they are your choices but they do teach you new things wether there good or ba, you get something out of it. i like the fact that this book shows you cant judge someone by the way they look, you will get proved wrong. the theme of this book is there is no easy way out, you must face reality, life is an adventure with up and downs, but will be just fine.

[Holly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I started high school in the late 1970s, when Led Zeppelin was still touring and releasing albums, "We Are the Champions" by Queen was a new single, and most of the girls AND boys wore their hair heavily feathered. In other words, I know the period this novel is set in pretty darn well, and I feel confident in dismissing this as adolescent, self-indulgent, pretentious crap. The narrator thinks she's wise and insightful beyond her years, but really, she's awfully stupid, even for a 16-year-old. And given the sorts of problems she creates for herself, the story of her struggles is remarkably boring. This book is just embarrassing--it's like someone published a teenager's super-secret journal to humiliate her. Ugh.