Daughters of Eve
Page 22
Malinda: That’s true. There is one line in your book where one of the girls is talking to her mother and her mother did say that the reason men do things is because they can’t have babies. I thought that was really poignant and a very deep moment in the book. Thinking about teen girls today reading DAUGHTERS OF EVE now, why do you think girls will still identify with this story?
Lois: I think the characters are believable in whatever era they’re presented. I don’t think that the personality of those girls would be any different back when I wrote the book than they would be today; it’s just that the pressures upon them might be different. I think that if you look at this many girls, you’re going to relate to somebody.
Malinda: Well, I know that every girl in this book had a certain aspect of her personality that I definitely related to. Is there any one character in the book whom you felt most like when you were growing up?
Lois: No, I don’t think so. Not one particular one. I think aspects of myself are in every one of them, except perhaps Jane. Because it’s very hard to write about a character without some part of yourself creeping into that character, just out of your subconscious, because that’s what’s familiar to you. And that’s what makes characters real.
Malinda: Unlike some of your other books, there isn’t just one central female protagonist—there are ten girls here. Why did you decide to write the book from each of their perspectives instead of just focusing on one?
Lois: I wanted the challenge of trying to write from that many viewpoints, and it was hard, because I think perhaps I had too many characters. But you can’t have a club with only three characters in it, so some of the characters I used just as foils, while I let the stronger characters—or the more dramatic characters—carry the brunt of the story. But I wanted to at least show glimpses of the others, to fill it out.
Malinda: Let’s talk a little bit about this idea you had of a charismatic person leading these teens into dangerous fanaticism. You said your original idea was the charismatic Sunday school teacher, which is so fascinating. And then you have Ms. Stark here, who is really making a huge impression on the girls she teaches—they’re so susceptible to her teaching. Just as a teacher has a responsibility to guide his or her students in their education, do you feel any similar responsibility as an author?
Lois: Yes, I do. That’s one reason that I have set some standards for myself that I try to stick to. My novels don’t contain sensationalized violence or graphic descriptions of gore and horror, and they don’t contain explicit sex scenes. In this book, Ann does get pregnant, but that happens offstage. The reader doesn’t watch it happen like a voyeur. And Jane’s act of violence at the end is very played down. She commits the act, and it’s shocking, not entertaining, and then it stops and the reader doesn’t wallow in a vivid description of the aftermath of it.
Malinda: Do you think that’s part of the reason you decided to write for a young audience? To tell these kinds of stories without resorting to more graphic language?
Lois: I started writing for a young audience because I was so young myself. Teen issues were all I knew about, and when I got one book published, the publisher optioned my next book, whatever it would be—but it had to be a young adult book. So I wrote another one and they optioned my next one. I got into the genre because of my own age. I was writing pretty much for my peers. And then later, when people kept trying to get me to write for adults, I realized that I didn’t want to have to go into sensationalized violence and explicit sex. This way, writing for teens, I could still write about all of the subjects that interested me, and I still could write with suspense and write an exciting story, but I would not have to write about things that made me uncomfortable. So I was happier staying there, and although I have written in many other genres as well, this is the genre that I’ve had the most success with.
Malinda: Even if you don’t describe them in detail, the violence and sex, I feel like your books have scared me more than a lot of YA books.
Lois: I think some of the gory scenes are totally unnecessary. The book actually can be scarier without them, because the readers have to use their imagination.
Malinda Lo, a former entertainment reporter, is the author of Ash and Huntress, two young adult fantasy novels. She lives in Northern California with her partner and their dog. Her website is www.malindalo.com.
Contents
Front Cover Image
Welcome
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
For the Record
Q&A with the Author
Lois Duncan
Also by Lois Duncan
Praise
Copyright
LOIS DUNCAN
Lois Duncan is the author of over fifty books, ranging from children’s picture books to poetry to adult nonfiction, but is best known for her young adult suspense novels, which have received Young Readers Awards in sixteen states and three foreign countries. In 1992, Lois was presented the Margaret A. Edwards Award by the School Library Journal and the ALA Young Adult Library Services Association for “a distinguished body of adolescent literature.” In 2009, she received the St. Katharine Drexel Award, given by the Catholic Library Association “to recognize an outstanding contribution by an individual to the growth of high school and young adult librarianship and literature.”
Lois was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Sarasota, Florida. She knew from early childhood that she wanted to be a writer. She submitted her first story to a magazine at age ten and became published at thirteen. Throughout her high school years she wrote regularly for young people’s publications, particularly Seventeen.
As an adult, Lois moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she taught magazine writing for the Journalism Department at the University of New Mexico and continued to write for magazines. Over three hundred of her articles and stories appeared in such publications as Ladies’ Home Journal, Redbook, McCall’s, Good Housekeeping and Reader’s Digest, and for many years she was a contributing editor for Woman’s Day.
Six of her novels—SUMMER OF FEAR, KILLING MR. GRIFFIN, GALLOWS HILL, RANSOM, DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU and STRANGER WITH MY FACE—were made-for-TV movies. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and HOTEL FOR DOGS were box office hits.
Although young people are most familiar with Lois Duncan’s fictional suspense novels, adults may know her best as the author of WHO KILLED MY DAUGHTER?, the true story of the murder of Kaitlyn Arquette, the youngest of Lois’s children. Kait’s heartbreaking story has been featured on such TV shows as Unsolved Mysteries, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, Sally Jessy Raphael and Inside Edition. A full account of the family’s ongoing personal investigation of this still unsolved homicide can be found on the Internet at http://kaitarquette.arquettes.com.
Lois and her husband, Don Arquette, currently live in Sarasota, Florida. They are the parents of five children.
You can visit Lois at http://loisduncan.arquettes.com.
Also by Lois Duncan:
DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU
DOWN A DARK HALL
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER
KILLING MR. GRIFFIN
LOCKED IN TIME
STRANGER WITH MY FACE
SUMMER OF FEAR
“Daughters of Eve is a rare find: a young adult novel that isn’t afraid to engage with feminism in all of its complexity. I highly recommend it to all girls who are thinking about their place in the world.”
—Malinda Lo, author of Ash and Huntress
“There a
re a lot of smart authors, and a lot of authors who write reasonably well. Lois Duncan is smart, writes darn good books and is one of the most entertaining authors in America.”
—Walter Dean Myers, Printz award–winning author of
Monster and Dope Sick
“She knows what you did last summer. And she knows how to find that secret evil in her characters’ hearts, evil she turns into throat-clutching suspense in book after book. Does anyone write scarier books than Lois Duncan? I don’t think so.”
—R. L. Stine, author of Goosebumps and Fear Street
“I couldn’t be more pleased that Lois Duncan’s books will now reach a new generation of readers.”
—Judy Blume, author of Forever and Tiger Eyes
“Lois Duncan has always been one of my biggest inspirations. I gobbled up her novels in my teens, often reading them again and again and scaring myself over and over. She’s a master of suspense, so prepare to be dazzled and spooked!”
—Sara Shepard, author of the Pretty Little Liars series
“Lois Duncan’s books kept me up many a late night reading under the covers with a flashlight!”
—Wendy Mass, author of A Mango-Shaped Space, Leap Day and Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall
“Lois Duncan is the patron saint of all things awesome.”
—Jenny Han, author of The Summer I Turned Pretty series
“Duncan is one of the smartest, funniest and most terrifying writers around—a writer that a generation of girls LOVED to tatters, while learning to never read her books without another friend to scream with handy.”
—Lizzie Skurnick, author of Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading
“In middle school and high school, I loved Lois Duncan’s novels. I still do. I particularly remember Killing Mr. Griffin, which took my breath away. I couldn’t quite believe a writer could DO that. I feel extremely grateful to Lois Duncan for taking unprecedented risks, challenging preconceptions and changing the young adult field forever.”
—Erica S. Perl, author of Vintage Veronica
“Haunting and suspenseful—Duncan’s writing captures everything fun about reading!”
—Suzanne Young, author of The Naughty
List series and A Need So Beautiful
“Killing Mr. Griffin taught me a lot about writing. Thrilling stuff. It was one of the most requested and enjoyed books I taught with my students. I think it’s influenced most of my writing since.”
—Gail Giles, author of Right Behind You and Shattering Glass
“If ever a writer’s work should be brought before each new generation of young readers, it is that of Lois Duncan. The grace with which she has led her life—a life that included a tragedy that would have brought most of us to our knees—is reflected in her writing, particularly (from my point of view) in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Her stories, like Lois herself, are ageless.”
—Chris Crutcher, author of Angry Management, Deadline and
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes
“Lois Duncan’s thrillers have a timeless quality about them. They are good stories, very well told, that also happen to illuminate both the heroic and dark parts of growing up.”
—Marc Talbert, author of Dead Birds Singing, A Sunburned
Prayer and Heart of a Jaguar
Copyright
Copyright © 1979 by Lois Duncan
Author Q&A copyright © 2011 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: October 2011
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-19453-2