Different for Girls: The Babysitter's Code, Hardly Knew Her

by Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman has long been fascinated by the dangerous vulnerability of teenage girls. In “The Babysitter's Code”—the inspiration for her critically acclaimed novel, To the Power of Three—an adolescent girl decides to take a gun to school. In “Hardly Knew Her,” Lippman's homage to Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding, a tomboy learns that growing up means learning how to lie and deceive. And in “Ice*”—a prequel to The Most Dangerous Thing—a young girl is literally haunted by a child who drowned in a mysterious accident. Available singly or as a collection.

ebook

First published July 3, 2018

About the author

Since Laura Lippman’s debut, she has been recognized as a distinctive voice in mystery fiction and named one of the “essential” crime writers of the last 100 years. Stephen King called her “special, even extraordinary,” and Gillian Flynn wrote, “She is simply a brilliant novelist.” Her books have won most of the major awards in her field and been translated into more than twenty-five languages. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her teenager.

Reviews

[Mrs. Read · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laura Lippmann’s Different for Girls consists of two longish short stories, “The Babysitter's Code” and “Hardly Knew Her,” both available with other stories in Lippmann’s full-length collection, Hardly Knew Her. I especially liked “The Babysitter's Code,” which reminded me of Robert Block’s great short, “A Blow for Freedom.” I noted that some Goodreaders criticized what they perceived as “Babysitter’s” abrupt ending. I took it as intentional; I think what Lippmann’s wanted to portray was an inflection point in a girl’s life. Such a point by definition is one from which there are many possible paths. How Terri’s future will be shaped by the lessons that she has been taught about the blessings and obligations of marriage and parenthood and about the feeling of power that comes with possession of a deadly weapon is yet unknown - Lippmann is showing us the class, not the subsequent career.
The uniformly unlikeable characters in “Hardly Knew Her” made the story a less pleasant read, but its observation about a “company town” could not be better expressed:
So the families of Dundalk breathed the reddish air, collected their regular paychecks, and comforted one another when a man was hurt or killed, accepting those accidents as the inevitable price for a secure job. It was only later, when the slow poison of asbestosis began moving from household to household, that the Beth Steel families began to question the deal they had made. Later still, the all-but-dead company was sold for its parts and the new owner simply ended it all—pensions, health care, every promise ever made.. You’d have to look hard to find a better example of the truth of Psalm 146.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s only two stories in here which is disappointing because they were so good! The rest is 3-4 chapter excerpt of a novel which I didn’t read because I’d rather just read the novel? I’m not a “sneak peek” person.