Welcome back to Book Break! Today I am joined by the amazing author Abigail Tarttelin,
whose book Dead Girls is out now.
Can you tell us a little bit about the book? ABIGAIL: It is about two best friends,
Thera and Billie. They're eleven years old, it's 1999,
the age of Girl Power. EMMA: Like my t-shirt.
ABIGAIL: Yep, exactly like your t-shirt, I was so pleased when I saw that.
And Billie goes missing. At the beginning of the book, so not giving away any spoilers.
When Thera hears that she's gone missing she thinks I'm the best person to find her
so she goes off to look for her friend and
she finds Billie dead
and Billie's been killed. And Thera decides because it's her very best
friend and she's a kid and she's very black and white, there's good versus evil, and she's
going to go hunt down the killer.
EMMA: So the title Dead Girls is partly in
reference to these ghosts that we meet throughout the book,
and then also from reading the dedication, you've dedicated it to all the dead and missing
girls. ABIGAIL: Every ten minutes, an adolescent
girl dies a violent death. And I felt like I wanted to write a book for those little
girls. It's a little bit of an opportunity for them to have a kickass narrative.
EMMA: But this is very much not a YA novel. ABIGAIL: Not for kids, no.
Personally I'd say that it's probably 15+.
EMMA: Thera reacts really strongly against
the way that Billie is talked about by her friends at school and by her family,
it's all that she's this sort of angel victim who was perfect.
ABIGAIL: Yeah exactly. That's such an important thing about the book
to me, and I do think that when we report on missing girls and women, if it's a prostitute
or an older woman, we don't really think about it that much and it doesn't get that much
media. But then when it's a little girl, and the
purer and younger and blonder the better, I think there's a racial element there,
We need them to be like that to care, seemingly. And I really want to talk about that women
are complex, that girls are complex, and that we don't need to be angels in order
for our lives to have meaning. Personally, I don't want to be seen as a victim.
I feel like I've, in life, got in there and kicked a bit of ass, and fought for the things
that I loved, and I think we need to be talking about women
like that. So I love the idea that somebody sets out
to be a victor, and whether they succeed or not, they're still
a victor in my eyes. EMMA: There's been a conversation starting
recently about thrillers, that so many of them have women as their victims.
What other books or films can you think of recently that have done a better job of that?
ABIGAIL: OK well, there's the very obvious and it's not so recent now, but Girl with
the Dragon Tattoo. And I think that kind of kicked off the feminist revenge narrative
as a wave. And then Gone Girl I think was another big
one. But even just in the past year there's been
Thoroughbreds - these two teenage girls, American, who decide to enact revenge on I think it's
one of their fathers. And I'm really looking forward to a film,
an independent film, called Revenge. Really great reviews.
It's about a woman called Jen who goes with her partner on a little trip, and then two
of his friends show up and basically they begin to abuse her, and
they leave her for dead. But she's not dead.
And when she wakes up, she enacts bloody revenge. So I'm really looking forward to that.
I think the main reason that people like the feminist revenge narrative is that it's really
fun, and entertaining. And I personally don't always want to read
feminist books where I feel the pain so much. I quite like to read some kickass stuff.
EMMA: I think we're ready for it. I'm the same that when I first really started getting
into reading feminist books, they were all very sad, because they were all about exposing
the problems. And there's definitely a place for those,
those are really important and they shaped my feminism so much.
But I then got to a point where I was like, I can't read another one of these, it just
makes me want to curl up into a ball and feel helpless,
whereas this made me feel powerful. ABIGAIL: Cool, I'm so glad!
EMMA: You mentioned some of the statistics about the violence that women face, the dangers
that women face. What's the best way to balance talking to
women and talking to young girls about the very real dangers that they need to be aware
of, but without talking to them as potential victims. Talking to them as potential victors
is the phrase that you use. ABIGAIL: I think that you can talk to young
girls about being aware of strangers, but the way that we do it is that we stop talking
to them about being a good girl and being obedient and pretty as the highest values.
Talk about what you can do in an aggressive and frightening way to scare off somebody.
My mum always taught me to yell your head off, and I think men prey on little girls
because they think that they're not going to get anything like what
Thera does in Dead Girls. EMMA: Absolutely.
I'd really like to talk about Nathan, I found Nathan a really interesting character,
because he is a teenage boy dealing with these things, and he's coming of age and discovering
his sexuality, while also learning about the more violent version of those desires that
some men can have. What do you think is the best way that we
can educate young boys? ABIGAIL: I think that's a harder and probably
less talked about question. Little boys, just the same as little girls,
haven't had a chance, given how old they are, to impact on society yet. They're really just
imbibing everything that comes to them, and reflecting back what they've been taught.
I really feel for Nathan because he's, like Thera, affected by this violent sexual act
that happens to Billie, and in thinking about his own sexuality that
really warps him, in the same way that I really want to talk
about how, in the transition from girlhood to womanhood, often sexuality - girl sexuality
- is affected by the presence of rape culture and what they read and see and hear.
EMMA: Do you have any plans for your next book?
ABIGAIL: I don't want to hint too much, but I'm going to be talking a bit more about masculinity,
because I touched upon that in my first book, but I wrote my first book when I was 19/21,
and now I've dated all of the men, and I can report back,
and it's a little bit about crime as well. EMMA: Well, thank you so much for talking
to me, it was really great. Dead Girls is out now, I highly recommend it, I thought
it was really powerful and also really entertaining like you said, I was up until 3 in the morning
reading it. Really really recommend. And do leave a comment below if you have any
recommendations for crime books and movies that have powerful women in them that are
the victors not the victims, we'd love to find them all.
And next week on Book Break we're going to be talking about mental health in the workplace,
so do hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on that one.
See you next time!