Books

All In Together Girls

These are candid stories about women, young and old, grappling with generational wariness, creative recklessness, and illusive purpose.

The title of the book, All In Together Girls, is inspired by a jump rope rhyme, and the stories in it are a meeting place for girls as surely as the chant would have been on the playground. They explore the late night drive-through culture of bored teens whose "sleepover" alibis have left them with no place else to go, the relentless search for identity, and the seductions of drugs, sex, and friendship. Hallmarked by entrances into, and thought-provoking points of exit from, moments of addiction, betrayal, misjudgement, and first love, they are defining portraits of girls and women during the storm and stress of self-discovery.

Never preachy and always true to her characters' voices, Sutherland's stories quake with quiet energy.


Excerpt:

Saturday night started off like usual - just us girls, and Mitch, drinking in the parking lot behind the Pentecostal church. We got super-size orange drinks from the McDonald's, poured a bunch out, then topped them up with little airline bottles of vodka that Mitch stole from his mom. I'm pretty sure she stole them from the airline where she used to be a stewardess, which is probably why she's not a stewardess anymore. She says they fired her when she got fat, even after all the sacrifices she made for the job, and she's going to sue them for everything, just watch her. She's always suing somebody for something. She gives Mitch a dopey, teary look every time she says the part about sacrifices, and we all know she's talking about his dad getting custody of him, back when his parents split up. She's got thousands of little bottles of booze all over her apartment the way other people have china knickknacks. Mitch swipes a bunch for us every time he's over there, which is why we hang out with him. That and because we like to have a guy's opinion on stuff sometimes.

- from "Open All Night." © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.


All In Together Girls is now available in Canada, the U.S., the UK, and most other places where English language books are sold. You can buy it at your local bookstore, or order it from online retailers such as McNally Robinson, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, Powell's, or The Book Depository. You can also order it directly from Thistledown Press.

Summer Reading

This collection of short fiction focuses on the challenges posed by male/female relationships, concentrating on women and girls losing and recovering themselves. Because they often have to find their way without traditional support sysems, they have books, maps, or astrological predictions through which to figure out themselves and others.

Sutherland's narrative voice is confident and poignantly authentic without lapsing into sentimentality.

Winner of the 1995 Saskatchewan Book Award for Best First Book.




Excerpt:

It's a strain waking up in a strange man's bed to the sound of church bells ringing. I didn't think I had any religion left, but the guilt sets in pretty quick with all that solemn clanging in the background.

I never mean for this to happen. It's the whisky - Irish, scotch, bourbon, doesn't matter which. The first few glasses are a warm bath, my face prickles pink, my legs tremble. A couple more and I'm floating in the smoke-blue air. I stop listening to the man I'm talking with and just watch his lips move, the way they curve round his words. I find myself tipping into his open mouth.

This goes directly against my sun sign. Aquarians aren't known as heavy drinkers. We're supposed to be social about it, just a few to keep the conversation flowing. If I were Pisces, it would be a different story. They like to experience the alcohol, that hazy feeling. I guess that's what it means to drink like a fish.

- from "me & men & whisky." © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.


Summer Reading is currently out of print. However, you can borrow it from libraries across Canada, and copies occasionally turn up for purchase at second-hand bookshops and online retailers such as AbeBooks.