Tuesday, February 02, 2021

Eight top mean girls in literature

Ellie Eaton is a freelance writer, whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Observer, and Time Out. Former Writer-in-Residence at a men’s prison in the UK, she holds an MA in creative writing from Royal Holloway, University of London and was awarded a Kerouac Project residency. Born and raised in England, she now lives in Los Angeles with her family. The Divines is her first novel.

At Lit Hub, Eaton tagged eight of literature's notable mean girls, including:
Bunny Lampert
Rufi Thorpe, The Knockout Queen

Nobody writes about the messy lives of adolescents better than Rufi Thorpe and, let’s face it, there are few things more terrifying than a teenage girl. At six foot three, Bunny Lampert looms large in this story about a rich Californian volleyball player and her gay best friend Michael. A self-described monster, Bunny bites a one boy’s ear so hard she makes him bleed, before going on to pound a female team mate’s head into a locker room door so hard it sounded “like celery wrapped in meat, like, just crunching.” Despite torching a building and bedding her coach, there’s something uniquely forgivable about Bunny’s capacity for destruction and violence. Her unwieldy body, her loyalty to her friend, her twisted insecurities, all serve to remind us of the horrors of being a teenage girl.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue