The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Aimee Bender
- First Published: 1998
- Type of Plot: Psychological
- Time of Work: The 1990's
- Setting: A high-rise apartment in an unnamed city
- Principal Characters: The narrator, Her father, Paul, A girl in a flammable skirt
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: Parents and children, Teenagers, Love or romance, Twentieth century, Alcoholism or alcoholics, Fathers, Death or dying, Disabilities or physically challenged persons, Apartment houses, Fire, 1990’s, Rats or mice
The Story
“The Girl in the Flammable Skirt” is a series of loosely connected, often symbolic, vignettes narrated by a teenage girl.
In the first section, the girl comes home from school to find her father wearing a backpack made of stone. She tells him to take it off, and he responds by giving it to her. She puts it on her own back and stands bent over in a corner, leaving her father free to move around the house. She asks him what is in the backpack, which is very heavy. He is watching television and replies simply that it is something he owns. She asks if she can...
[The entire page is 1463 words long]
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