Tag: Abigail Ulman

‘Head to Toe’ by Abigail Ulman

Much like ‘The Empty the Empty the Empty’, this story from Abigail Ulman’s collection Hot Little Hands explores the complexities of girl friendships. The best friends in this story are Australian teenagers who are incredibly bored with their privileged lives – filled with shopping, boys, parties and occasional drug taking. The girls break out of their lethargy by revisiting a horse-riding camp they attended as younger girls, where they enjoy taking on the role of big sisters to their roommates at the camp and offering advice. This is an exquisitely written story about the liminal period of girlhood where the child’s impulse to play and pretend coexists with the desire to experiment with more adult behaviours.

Published in Hot Little Hands, Spiegel & Grau/Penguin, 2016

‘Head to Toe’ by Abigail Ulman

In ‘Head to Toe’, jaded teenagers Jenni and Elise decide to withdraw from the keg parties and awkward sexual encounters of their peers and return to the horse-riding camp of their middle school summers. There’s this sense of quiet acceptance that life isn’t as exciting as they thought it would be, when they were kids lying in their sleeping bags, imaging their future of dating, of parties, of high school. The girls have to share a cabin with three pre-teens, and they enjoy sliding into the role of big sisters – as experienced mediators – when their roommates have a tearful row over an inconsequential truth-spilling game. Later, however, our protagonists find themselves struggling to adapt when the twenty-something riding coach tries to talk to them as peers over dinner. When they return home, after camp, they go to a party and slide right back into place. They aren’t quite adults, but they no longer feel like children. It’s the perfect story about the liminality of growing up.

Published in Hot Little Hands, Spiegel & Grau/Penguin, 2016