Debut novelist Katie Crouch doesn’t speak with a Southern accent, even though she spent her formative years in Charleston, South Carolina. She now lives up the coast in San Francisco, but has taken her wry observations about Southern life with her. Consider this passage from Girls in Trucks, which will be released Monday April 7th:
“She does not insult directly but instead sandwiches her blows between compliments drizzled in honey: ‘Cindy has the nicest disposition. Bottom the size of a lumber barge, but the nicest manners you can find.’”
Crouch has a lot to say on the topic of Southern manners. During our recent conversation, she laughed, “The other thing you hear a lot is ‘Bless her heart.’ Like women will say, ‘Her ass looked so saggy in those jeans! Bless her heart.’ Like it’s fine to insult someone as long as you say ‘Bless her heart.’” Girls in Trucks is filled with such comic remarks, but also explores a deeper emotional terrain.
The novel centers on Sarah Walters, a young Southern woman who flees to the North, and her life-long friends from her Camellia Society debutante days. The elliptical story checks in with the women during pivotal events, such as marriage, death, and many, many heartbreaking moments in their relationships. The prose is crisp and engaging, the characters flawed and complex. While the title may make you think “Chic Lit,” when they look at the title, Girls in Trucks is in actuality a fine literary debut.
How long did it take to write Girls in Trucks? How did it come to be?
The book took me five years to write. I was living in New York and going to Columbia, getting my MFA. I was desperately in love with my ex-boyfriend who was living on the other side of central park. I used to jog around the park, and one day I saw him with another woman; I went home and wrote a really boring story about it. But writing about it made me feel better. After I wrote three stories about these characters, I realized it was more of a novel. My writing changed as a I wrote it. It started out flowery and got more direct. The last two years were editing, mostly. Writing new chapters, finding the weak links, trashing those chapters… hopefully the next book won’t take as long.
A lot of chapters in the book read as if they could stand alone as short stories. In fact, Girls in Trucks doesn’t stick to a traditional novelistic structure. Point of view shifts. Why did you employ this more experimental approach?
I was playing with voice, and didn’t want it to be straight-out first person Sarah Walters stories. I wanted readers to have a more distant look at her experiences, as well as those of the other characters. I wanted [the chapter] “Bitsy’s List” to be a letter that Sarah would find, not that it has to be, but that’s an interpretation. I liked that after you’ve seen Bitsy as a hard person that’s hard to identify with, you’re in her head so much and forced to see her in a different way. So that’s a long way of saying I was playing with voice.
Your main character, Sarah, is very compelling. How would you describe Sarah Walters?
She makes bad decisions. She grows up with this promise of a lovely existence, in this mannered society. She learns the rules to lead a nice life and bring home a good man; not that she really buys into it, but when it doesn’t happen, she feels let down, and more and more cynical as time goes on. But the great thing about her is, she has a lot of faith and love in different forms. And that’s what ultimately saves her. So she has her redeeming qualities. She’s humorous and self deprecating, and never lets things sink her. I’d be friends with her. She’d be the “disaster” friend. Those people are more fun to write about than the people who have it together, at least to me.
Even though Sara leaves the south fairly early on in the book, a lot of the novel is about Southern life and customs. Sara and her friends seem to allow the men in their lives to treat them badly. Do you see this sort of feminine passivity as particularly Southern, or is it something that young women as a whole are prone towards in their early relationships?
I do think it’s Southern, there’s a sort of passivity that one learns. Happy, pretty, busy – “Act happy, be pretty, look busy.” Don’t be clingy. Even my friends who live in San Francisco and New York now are a little more passive with their needs. I mean, not all women from the South –Dorothy Allison would slap me for saying that! But I don’t know that it’s universal for young women. Of course, I wasn’t trying to make a statement about passive Southern women. Those were just the actions of my characters. That’s the beauty of fiction: you write what you find to be true.
Not only is “Girls in Trucks” the title of the book, it’s a reoccurring motif. What is it that girls riding in trucks represents to you?
I find trucks so masculine, sexy; so they symbolize sex. Sarah has her first orgasm is one. For Annie, it’s youth and being free – she’s so stuck . The mother, by saying girls shouldn’t ride in them, is saying don’t be loose. So, yeah, sex. With my title, I loved the different words. “Girls” gets used in books a lot – The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing, The Other Boleyn Girl – and it’s actually a word you’re supposed to stay away from. But it created such a great juxtaposition with truck, that hard sound. There was a little talk of changing the title but I stuck to my guns because I really liked it. [The publisher] ended up liking it, too.
People often assume that novels, especially first novels, are somewhat autobiographical. What elements of your own life or experiences served as inspiration in telling this story?
It is very emotionally autobiographical. I’ve been in my heart and head where all the characters have been. I grew up in Charleston and attended cotillion, but I never was a debutant. I was a bit of an outsider because my family moved there when I was two, and that’s the kind of place Charleston is. Unless you go three generations back, you’re not from there. So I grew up as an observer, which helped. I can see Charleston with an objective eye.The only part of the novel that’s straight autobiography is “North,” the chapter where Sarah’s in college. I wanted to leave the south, go up North – I thought, that’s where the action is. Then I basically had a nervous breakdown and couldn’t get out of bed for days. That’s the experience of a lot of Southerners. You don’t realize that the sheer force of a New England winter will knock the daylights out of you.As far as the relationship stuff goes, my love life hasn’t been as disastrous as Sarah’s, but I’m 34, not married. I’ve dated a lot and had my heart put through the ringer. So I drew on those experiences . I’ve been there in some form.
You studied writing at Brown and Columbia – what’s your take on college writing workshops? Were they beneficial to you?
Well, in high school I won writing contests and that sort of thing, and when I went to Brown, everyone in those workshops was a great writer and I got the wind knocked out of me. I ended up not writing for eight years. But then I went to Columbia later for my MFA when I knew writing was what I wanted to do. I threw out a career in advertising to go, so having eight people sitting around a table telling you a story is no good – or having your teacher tell you it’s no good – is rough. So it’s not for everyone. A work-shopped novel can become like a make-your-own-pizza, you get so many opinions from everyone, what they think you should put in, take out…it can be damaging to a young writer. But they’re good for helping you develop a thick skin, help you trust what you believe about writing. So my opinion’s a little mixed.
Who are some of your favorite writers?
George Saunders, I love Aimee Bender. As far as Southern writers, Flannery O’Connor is classic Southern. Faulkner. Josephine Humphreys is a writer from Charleston and I grew up with her sons, so knowing a writer influenced me.There are so many amazing young novelists, too. I just finished Vendela Vida’s Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, which was so great. Susan Minot speaks to me. Alice Munro — her stories are so amazing, and I have to re-read them so many times to really get them.
What is your writing process?
I write in the morning with my first cup of coffee. It’s kind of like working out – I say I write every day but there are some days I don’t, I’m just off doing other things. But I try to write every day. It’s like practicing the piano, I lose steam if I don’t do it every day .
Have you already started working on your next project?
Yes. I’m working on a new novel, more of a classic structure, with a full arc. It’s mostly set in the South about a Southern family. It takes place in the early ‘80s. The father goes missing on a fishing trip and it’s about the ramifications. I’m in the middle of it, so who knows, it might be about something completely different by the time I’m done. But having the book coming out is making me anxious, so working on the new one is keeping me calm.
Any advice for aspiring novelists?
Just write. It’s the only way that anything gets produced and the only way you’ll get better.
For more on Katie Crouch check out her book video here.
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