‘Love, Heather’: This Isn’t Your Mamma’s High School

The main character of my new book, ‘Love, Heather’(Crooked Lane Books, coming out Oct 8th)  is Stevie. She is an insufferable know-it-all, she’s funny, she’s infuriating, and she loves 80s and 90s movies. I loved writing Stevie, and she really was drawn from parts of me, and also added to parts of me in that weird way that main characters do for authors. She’s 15 years old, and although the book takes place in the here and now, there are things that will ever be thus for 15 year-olds as they try and find their places in the world. 

Stevie is growing up in a time period that I am so thankful that I avoided, and my aim was to have a look at that crazy difficult time of early high school during the climate of online and social media with all of its wonder and pitfalls. I am a professor by day, and as I watch the young people in my life face the challenges of an online world, I now find that my prevailing teaching approach is empathy. It is vital in a culture where anonymity is so permissive, and apps are designed based on our constant need for attention and reaffirmation, our need to be, quite literally, ‘liked’. 

‘Love, Heather’ shines a light on bullying, rape culture, consent, gender-based violence, and friendship. It is a Young Adult/Adult crossover. It asks a lot of the reader, namely to reserve judgment and consider that events are not black and white, but that they are a greyish animal with a very long tail. I wrote an Author’s Note at the end of the book that addresses this:

There is pain in this book. It might be familiar to some and foreign to others. It is my hope that by shining a light on aspects of the world we share – on some of our pain – that we might see shades and variations rather than simply light and darkness. 

My interest in writing this novel was to push back on the question often asked by individuals and the media when it comes to bullying and violence. Some of us have been asked the question ourselves: 

‘Was it really that bad?’ 

We all have different bars set for how ‘bad’ things need to be to justify the actions of others. I don’t have the answer, and neither do the characters in this book. They do, however, ask you to consider that to suffer alone, and without the empathy of others, well, that is ‘that bad’. It is the worst of all. To find people who will stand by us, come what may, they are worth everything. 

As Stevie would say, they are all the heart emojis. And a couple of unicorns. 

Stevie is a cinephile with a categorical knowledge of 80s and 90s films. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and while I wasn’t as into films as Stevie, I remember many of us being so passionate about something that we needed to be the house expert. For me it was John Lennon and the Beatles, it was JD Salinger and other books I was reading at the time; for Stevie, it’s classic 80s and 90s movies. They are her touchstones, the things that connect her first to her mother, and then to the world, via her Youtube channel. The chapters often open with her intros to her channel, and as Stevie navigates the difficulties of life in the now, she looks at movies from the past that tell us about friendship, about courage, and about revenge. 

I don’t love scary movies. I never have. I couldn’t even watch Carrie as research for the book, but I did a lot of transcript reading of 80s and 90s revenge flicks to familiarize myself with that genre. I need to read – that is the way I do research. It comes from both my love of reading and my research background as an academic. I need to dig and dig and gather material, and then sift through it for the little pieces of gold that I can use.

Ultimately, Stevie likes many of the same movies as I grew up with (shocker) and so I drew on my favourites: the Brat Pack movies, tear-jerkers like Terms of Endearment, Mean Girls, and, of course, Heathers. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I loved Heathers because Winona Ryder is such a badass, because she stands out from the crowd even while she wants to be part of it. In my reading and research on all the old favourites I was able to look at them through today’s lens.

One thing that sort of breaks my heart is the realization that many of movies that I loved at the time are examples of rape culture, racism, homophobia and more – which, of course Stevie knows – she is of this time, after all. And so she tries to reconcile her love of the classics with her knowledge of oppression. She takes both lessons and inspiration from the films in equal measure. 

This book was nearly impossible to title. We – my editor at Crooked Lane Books, my agent, and I – went round and round with possible book titles. There is a long Google doc to this effect. None of them worked. I scoured my favourite movie references for lines that could work. In one pee-my-pants laughing moment, my best friend and I sat in her car outside a publishing party I was nervous to go into and brainstormed to the point of hysteria, screaming that the book should be called Keep Your Tits On (or KYTO for short), a line from Carrie.

I had a custom-made cross-stitched wall hanging of that line made for my agent for putting up with me. In the end, it was Chelsey, my editor, who suggested ‘Love, Heather’, which is how Stevie and her band of vigilantes sign off on their revenge stunts. It is the best title, and I love it. It gives me permission to troll the web for gifs from Heathers forever, as is my wont. Winona Ryder with face all banged up, saying ‘How very’ is my favourite right now. 

The best part of this book journey is reading the early reviews of the book and seeing how readers are connecting with it, how they are surprised by it. The prevailing feeling seems to be that you’ll get more than you bargained for when you read ‘Love, Heather’. Just like Stevie, it is not one thing. So, thank you, readers, I hope you enjoy the ride!

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LAURIE PETROU is an associate professor at the RTA School of Media at Ryerson University in Toronto. Her first book, a collection of short stories titled Between, was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. She was the inaugural winner of the Half the World Global Literati Award in 2016 for her unpublished novel, Sister of Mine, which also became a Globe and Mail Best Book. Her newest novel, ‘Love, Heather’, will be published in October 2019 through Crooked Lane Books. 

Follow her on Twitter@lauriepetrou

 

LOVE, HEATHER Crooked Lane Books coming out Oct 8th

Award-winning author Laurie Petrou makes her YA debut with this atmospheric thriller exploring the addictive pull of revenge.

What you see isn’t always what you get.

Stevie never meant for things to go this far. When she and Dee–defiant, bold, indestructible Dee–started all this, there was a purpose to their acts of vengeance: to put the bullies of Woepine High School back in their place. And three months ago, Stevie believed they deserved it. Once her best friend turned on her, the rest of the school followed. Stevie was alone and unprotected with a target on her back. Online, it was worse.

It was Dee’s idea to get them all back with a few clever pranks, signing each act Love, Heather–an homage to her favorite 80’s revenge flick. Despite herself, Stevie can’t help getting caught up in the payback, reveling in every minute of suffering. And for a while, it works: it seems the meek have inherited the school.

But when anonymous students begin joining in, punishing perceived slights with increasingly violent ferocity, the line between villain and vigilante begins to blur. As friends turn on each other and the administration scrambles to regain control, it becomes clear: whatever Dee and Stevie started has gained a mind–and teeth–of its own. And when it finally swallows them whole, one will reemerge changed, with a plan for one final, terrifying act of revenge.

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