Lit or Filth? Chicagoist Endeavors to Find the Truth

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on May 23, 2005 5:44PM

Chicagoist was looking for something literary to do this week, and stumbled upon a couple of readings of Colleen Curran's first novel, Whores on the Hill. We read the blurb at Women & Children First--young women at the last all-girls high school in Milwaukee in the 80's: the sex, the drinking, the drugs--and have to admit that we were a little turned off. We were super nerds in high school (and, yes, beyond) and lacked both the motivation and the opportunity to participate in such debauchery--and the celebratory tone of the blurb had us feeling a little bit uneasy.

But then we kept coming back to it, and now we're thoroughly intrigued. Curran, a native of Milwaukee and herself a graduate of an all-girls Catholic high school, speaks in an interview about "a real fear of teenage sexuality – a real, present cultural fear of girls and sex and the power of that...." This point is underscored by the great range and passion of reader reviews on Amazon: lots of 1-star reviews that accuse the author of contributing the moral decline of American youth for a buck, and plenty of 5-star reviews (including one from a straight edge teen) that praise its authenticity and powerful prose. It reminds us more than a little bit of the controversy over the 2003 film Thirteen.

The marketing of Whores on the Hill rather complicates our impression as well. It's unclear whether this novel is intended for feminist adult women/mature teenage girls who may or may not have had similar experiences or for giggling adolescents who highlight the juicy parts and pass it around school. It's been written up in publications as varied as Kirkus, Glamour, and Teen Vogue, and is up for an award for best literary sex scene. We also hear that kids are being encouraged to post promotional materials around their schools. So, looking for a copy at Borders, we first checked the young adult section, but found it nowhere near The Princess Diaries. You can find yours amongst the grown-up fiction, curiously close, in fact, to The Washingtonienne: A Novel.

So we ask ourselves: do we need to write our libraries, imploring them to keep this smut off their shelves? Distribute it to the kids as a cautionary tale? Read it alone, or with our special friends? We hope Curran will give us some insight when we attend her reading of The Whores on the Hill tomorrow night:

Women & Children First
5233 N. Clark
Tuesday, May 24, 7:30 pm

You can also see Curran at Barbara's Bookstore in Oak Park, 1100 Lake Street, this Thursday at 7:30.

Photo from ColleenCurran.com.
Thanks, Kristin!