Shy Girl

” . . . fiercely and beautifully written, shot through with passion, pathos and wisdom . . . a complex and deeply imagined love story . . .”
– Rebecca Goldstein, author of The Mind-Body Problem

Shy Girl, a novel
FSG 1999, Seal Press 2000, German translation Orlanda Press 2003. Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Ferro-Grumely (Publisher’s Triangle) Award. Bestseller, Lambda Book Report, December 2000

“Who says you can’t go home again, even if it isn’t way cool? Way hip, way cool San Francisco body piercer Alta rides a Honda motorcycle and swaggers her way through women like a Donna Jaun. Beneath the brashly confiden facade, however, Alta hides the lasting effect of Shy, the lover from her teenaged past whom she can’t quite let go of. When Shy’s other is hospitalized with stroke, Alta plops her latest one-night stand, still wearing the tight, lime-green dress from the night before, in back of her on the bike and whizzes off to the old neighborhood, a mix of warehouses and dilapidated houses with concrete-slab porches. This triggers all the memories of her rejecting mother, her dead father, and, most of all, of Shy, who, pregnant, comes to tend her dying mother. As Alta and Shy move back toward intimacy, they also learn more about their mothers’ secrets than either might have thought possible. A stark, incisive first novel.” — Booklist

“Elizabeth Stark’s first novel is a love poem to San Francisco . . . And Stark’s novel-length evocation of Alta’s finding a place in the world that has shunned her is truly wonderful.” — Bay Area Reporter

“In her impressive debut, Elizabeth Stark looks with sensitivity and compassion at whether living with a lie is ever justified in the struggle to survive.” – S.F. Chronicle

“Stark dazzles us with honesty . . . Shy Girl is an archeological dig into our own backyards. It’s the story of how childhood shapes us and what happens when we forget, dismiss, or ignore the foundations that support our adult lives.” — Cathy Young, BN

“Elizabeth Stark has embraced the most meaningful elements in anybody’s life–memory, identity, and love–and written of them beautifully, soulfully, and with great compassion.” — Bob Shacochis, author of Swimming in the Volcano

Hate crimes against books: Shy Girl is VANDALIZED!! “In early 2001, San Francisco Public Library staff began finding vandalized books shoved under shelves, hidden throughout the Main Library. Ultimately over 600 torn and sliced books, on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender topics, women’s issues and HIV/AIDS, were deemed beyond repair and withdrawn from the Library’s collection. Rather than discard the damaged books, the Library distributed them to interested community members in the hope of creating art. The wide variety of artistic responses to this hate crime resulted in “Reversing Vandalism,” an exhibition of over 200 original works of art, displayed in the Main Library from January 31 through May 2, 2004.” (from the SFPL web site) Learn more about this project and see what one artist did with the remains of Shy Girl.