Girl Meets Class
Contemporary Women’s Fiction Paperback: 266 pages Publisher: Henery Press (September 8, 2015) ISBN-13: 978-1941962855 E-Book ASIN: B00ZD1VIXO
Synopsis:
The unspooling of Toni Lee Wells’ Tiffany and Wild Turkey lifestyle begins with a trip to the Luckett County Jail drunk tank. An earlier wrist injury sidelined her pro tennis career, and now she’s trading her tennis whites for wild nights roaming the streets of Rose Hill, Georgia.
Her wealthy family finally gets fed up with her shenanigans. They cut off her monthly allowance but also make her a sweetheart deal: Get a job, keep it for a year, and you’ll receive an early inheritance. Act the fool or get fired, and you’ll lose it for good.
Toni Lee signs up for a fast-track Teacher Corps program. She hopes for an easy teaching gig, but what she gets is an assignment to Harriet Hall, a high school that churns out more thugs than scholars.
What’s a spoiled Southern belle to do when confronted with a bunch of street smart students who are determined to make her life as difficult as possible? Luckily, Carl, a handsome colleague, is willing to help her negotiate the rough teaching waters and keep her bed warm at night. But when Toni Lee gets involved with some dark dealings in the school system, she fears she might lose her new beau as well as her inheritance.
What I Thought:
This was an entertaining story about a spoiled, little, rich girl who has to go out an make it on her own. The writing in this story was superb. The main character as not likable at first, which made the story interesting. I like how Karen told this story about how Toni had to go work in an inner-city school. It made this story seem real.
I received a complimentary copy of this book for my honest review.
About The Author –
Karin Gillespie is national bestselling author of five novels and a humor columnist for
Augusta Magazine. Her nonfiction writing had been in the
New York Times, The Writer Magazine and
Romantic Times. She maintains a website and blog at
Karingillespie.net. Sign up for her newsletter on her website, follow her on
Twitter or connect with her on
Facebook.
GIVEAWAY: THERE IS GOING TO BE ONE E-COPY OF THIS BOOK GIVEN AWAY, JUST LEAVE A COMMENT WITH YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS, NO EMAIL NO ENTRY. I WILL PICK A WINNER BY SEPT 21.
Guest Post:
When Fiction Is Inspired By Real Life
It happens to every writer. You’re at a
cocktail party, grazing contentedly on canapés, contemplating whether or not
you can stuff a few in your purse without anyone noticing, when a guest corners
you.
“So I hear you’re a writer,” he or she says.
You’re tempted to fib because you recognize
the hungry gleam in the guest’s eye. Sadly you know what’s coming next.
“Have I got a story for you!”
For the next half hour you find yourself
backed up against a wall as the guest tells you every tragic event that’s ever
happened to her—everything from illegitimate babies to stalkers to mistreatment
by her evil twin. And then, after an hour or so, comes the punch line: “If you
write my story, I’ll give you half the profits!”
“So deeply tempting,” you say, “but no thank
you.”
Why? Because as most writers know a series of
events (no matter how dramatic and eye-popping) does not a novel make.
Fiction is only a metaphor for life. Real life events are often too messy and
random to make for a satisfying reading experience. Also there’s a tendency to
become hemmed in by real-life events. Any author who finds himself
saying, “but that’s how it really happened” is favoring truth over effective
storytelling.
And that’s why I’ve always avoided writing
about real life…until a couple of years ago.
I used to teach special education at an
inner-city high school. Ninety-eight percent of my students qualified for free
lunch, most lived in housing projects, many came to me straight from youth
detention centers. Almost all had severe learning difficulties or behavior
problems.
During that decade my life was a series of
crazy events. Kids arrived at school with bruises and cigarette burns. Many
smelled because they had no running water. Some lived in condemned housing. As
for me, I was assaulted twice, and one of my special education colleagues was
stabbed numerous times and later died from her injuries. Every Friday
afternoon, I’d gather with my peers, and over a few beers, we would try to make
sense of a milieu that was beyond the average person’s comprehension.
Then, after ten years of teaching, something
truly terrible happened which caused me to leave the school. After I quit, I
started writing novels.
Never once did I consider writing about my
teaching career. My novels were buoyant and humorous, and I intended to keep
them that way.
After my fifth novel, I enrolled in an MFA
program in Creative Writing and, in order to graduate, I had to write the first
one-hundred pages of a novel or as my professors called it, a thesis. Something
about the word thesis seemed to demand gravitas, and I felt I couldn’t write my
usual fluffy fare.
“Why not write about teaching?” my husband
suggested. I resisted. It seemed too large of a leap to go from writing light,
funny fiction to writing about extremely complex social problems. And what
about my readers? Would they follow me on this journey?
“Maybe not,” I told myself, “But it’s only a
hundred pages. I don’t have to finish it if I don’t want to.”
I started to write my school novel, picking
and choosing what real-life events would go into the narrative to best serve
the story. There was one caveat: I’d definitely include the awful event that
made me quit the school. It was the most dramatic episode of my teaching life and
it seemed to sum up my experiences.
Because my subject matter was so serious, I
tried to make my prose solemn and weighty, even though I’m typically not a very
ponderous person. Sadly my strategy backfired. The novel read like a slog
through a swamp in lead army boots. After extensive revisions, Girl Meets
Classended up being fairly
lighthearted, despite the dark nature of my experiences.
And what about that awful incident* that made
me quit?
It didn’t make the final cut. The intelligence
of the narrative took over and it no longer fit. It wasn’t my story anymore; it
belonged to my character Toni Lee Wells. At the beginning of Girl Meets
Class Toni Lee is a much
worse teacher than I, but in the end, she comes away with an understanding of
her circumstances that eluded me during my stint at the inner-city school. As
author John L’Heureux says, “The writer distorts reality in the interest of a
larger truth.”
Picture and synopsis from Goodreads.
