All In Together Girls [Paperback]

Kate Sutherland (Author)

Book Description

Candid and truthful stories about women, young and old, grappling with generational wariness, creative recklessness, and illusive purpose celebrate all that is beautiful, wild and distinctive in contemporary women.

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

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

KATE SUTHERLAND's first book of short fiction, Summer Reading (Thistledown Press) was shortlisted for a Saskatchewan Book Award for Best First Book in 1995 won the 1995 Saskatchewan Book Award for Best First Book and her work has appeared in Grain, Prairie Fire and The New Quarterly. Her . She is a law professor at York University in Toronto.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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"

Product Details

• Paperback: 149 pages
• Publisher: Thistledown Press; 1 edition (February 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1897235240
• ISBN-13: 978-1897235249
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,890,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Artful Short Fiction, September 21, 2008

By 

Suko (Southern CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All In Together Girls (Paperback)

5.0 out of 5 stars, Artful Short Fiction, September 21, 2008

I'm a glutton. Instead of reading one story in Kate Sutherland's All in Together Girls and then stopping to digest it before reading the next one, I'm reading them straight through, voraciously, without pausing to reflect on what's happened in any particular story. I should slow down, will slow down, and savor each one. They are quite engaging--stories about youth and self-discovery and relationships and all that good stuff. The author writes with an honest, believable voice and doesn't sugarcoat emotions. She's also a law professor. That floors me! I'm reminded of Alexander McCall Smith, the very prolific author of over sixty books--he's also a law professor. (Is there a connection here? How do these two different types of writing--legal and creative--complement each other?)

Published as a collection of short fiction in 2007, All in Together Girls tells fourteen different stories and rapidly draws us into different worlds. Kate Sutherland brings the characters to life for us--children, teenagers, and adults--and we feel the pain and triumph of various human struggles. Short story writing is an extremely creative form of creative writing, which presents unique challenges to writers because of the length of the stories--everyone and everything needs to be "accelerated", in a sense. Kate Sutherland proves she's up to the challenge, and is on a par with women such as Doris Lessing, Alice Munro, and Eudora Welty. The cliché, "good things come in small packages" proves true here; through her short stories she paints memorable portraits of everyday people in All in Together Girls. You can sample two of her stories, Cool and Aerial View of a Dinner Party, on Kate's Book Blog.

(Review from Suko's Notebook, my book blog.)