Girls Gone Wild

Rosemary Harris is the author of the Dirty Business mysteries featuring amateur sleuth Paula Holliday. Her debut novel, the Agatha and Anthony-nominated, Pushing Up Daisies, was followed by Corpse Flower (previously released as The Big Dirt Nap), Dead Head, and Slugfest. She is past president of MWA's NY Chapter and SINC's New England Chapter.

She is a native Brooklynite like some of the characters in her latest standalone novel, The Bitches of Brooklyn, but now splits her time between New York City and Fairfield County, CT. She is currently working on an historical novel — about a Girl.

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Girls Gone Wild — and I blame Sonny Mehta. Okay, maybe blame is too strong a word, but ever since the legendary publisher of Knopf saw fit to change the name of a certain book from Men Who Hate Women to Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Girls have been running amuck in book publishing. They’ve gotten on trains, gotten gone and fallen to earth. They’ve been lucky, Chinese and rich, and who knows what the fall list will bring. Admittedly, Men Who Hate Women is an angry, downer title. And Bizarro Revenge Fantasy was probably a little too obvious, but who could have predicted the overwhelming appeal of Girl? Mr. Mehta it would seem. He certainly didn’t invent the word but as an unintended consequence to his ingenious decision he seems to have spawned an entire sub-genre of Girl books. (Not all of them are Knopf, btw although Hornet’s Nest and Fire brilliantly and logically followed Tattoo.)

So why Girl and not Woman? Before you think a feminist rant is coming, that ain’t it. A woman who has published a book entitled The Bitches of Brooklyn has no right to throw stones – and I’m not. This is a legitimate marketing question. I have read three Girl-titled books since GWTDT – and not because Girl was in the title. As I recall most of the protagonists (other than tattoo girl) were on the far side of thirty. Not crones, but hardly the quivering, vulnerable young things the word Girl suggests.

Do publishing execs sit around in editorial meetings and try to figure out how to stick the word in every title? Go Set a WatchGirl? (“Listen, Harper, we’ve done a lot of market research…”) The Girls in the Boat? (“I don’t care if they were boys, we’ll sell more this way…”)

Maybe I should have titled Bitches, The Girls from Gravesend, or The Girls from Greenpoint. Who knows? What famous book title would you change to include the word Girl?

(PS, just as I sat down to write this, The Beach Boys’ California Girls came on the iPod. No kidding. It was a sign.)

© 2015 Rosemary Harris
www.rosemaryharris.com