Party Girl: A Short Story from the collection, Reader, I Married Him

Party Girl: A Short Story from the collection, Reader, I Married Him
Nadifa Mohamed

A short story by Nadifa Mohamed from the collection Reader, I Married Him: Stories inspired by Jane Eyre.In ‘Party Girl’, ahead of settling down, a woman looks back on her rebellious youth.Edited by Tracy Chevalier, the full collection, Reader I Married Him, brings together some of the finest and most creative voices in fiction today, to celebrate and salute the strength and lasting relevance of Charlotte Brontë’s game-changing novel and its beloved narrator.

Party Girl

Nadifa Mohamed

A short story from the collection

Copyright (#ulink_83eea006-d78c-521f-b0ab-f35a4195af86)

Published by The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Foreword © Tracy Chevalier 2016

Party Girl © Nadifa Mohamed 2016

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

Cover design by Heike Schüssler © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Jacket photograph © Dan Saelinger/Trunk Archive

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This story is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical events and figures, are the works of the authors’ imaginations.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008150594

Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008173463

Version: 2016-03-16

Contents

Cover (#ue7a4ed28-a9a9-5053-8f35-837af680dfd5)

Title Page (#u903095e9-1bda-5549-9923-6159e7fa0adb)

Copyright (#ua8488410-421e-5d9c-abd5-828fd74572e5)

Foreword by Tracy Chevalier (#u6dc73a13-0ece-5db3-a587-24dba00368bf)

Party Girl – Nadifa Mohamed (#ucfbdab4c-4293-57c4-9c36-0d109b4cd173)

Author Note (#litres_trial_promo)

A Note on Charlotte Brontë (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

FOREWORD BY (#ulink_990e6c59-1d57-5029-a19a-e510caf6a66d)TRACY CHEVALIER (#ulink_990e6c59-1d57-5029-a19a-e510caf6a66d)

Why is Charlotte Brontë’s “Reader, I married him” one of the most famous lines in literature? Why do we remember it and quote it so much?

Jane Eyre is “poor, obscure, plain, and little”, with no family and no prospects; the embodiment of the underdog who ultimately triumphs. And “Reader, I married him” is Jane’s defiant conclusion to her rollercoaster story. It is not, “Reader, he married me” – as you would expect in a Victorian society where women were supposed to be passive; or even, “Reader, we married.” Instead Jane asserts herself; she is the driving force of her narrative, and it is she who chooses to be with Rochester. Her self-determination is not only very appealing; it also serves to undercut the potential over-sweetness of a classic happy ending where the heroine gets her man. The mouse roars, and we pump our fist with her.

Twenty-one writers, then, have taken up this line and written what it has urged them to write. I liken it to a stone thrown into a pond, with its resulting ripples. Always, always in these stories there is love – whether it is the first spark or the last dying embers – in its many heart-breaking, life-affirming forms.

All of these stories have their own memorable lines, their own truths, their own happy or wry or devastating endings, but each is one of the ripples that finds its centre in Jane and Charlotte’s decisive clarion call: Reader, I married him.

Tracy Chevalier

PARTY GIRL (#ulink_61cc2612-784d-5d3f-be7f-9f2bf6eccb39)

NADIFA MOHAMED (#ulink_61cc2612-784d-5d3f-be7f-9f2bf6eccb39)

IT WASN’T ALWAYS LIKE THIS, YOU KNOW; for ages I was the kinda girl people said no one would wanna marry. Party Girl. Sharmuuto. Dhillo. I’ve heard it all. Started when I was around thirteen and got these breasts from nowhere, I’m talking flat as anything to E-cups in a coupla months; my hooyo made me put on a hijab quicksharp, no lie. Didn’t stop nothing, though. Boys and men still asking for my digits left, right and centre. Nothing to write home about, just leaaannn Somali boys acting gangster and Jamaican boys asking for a little touch. Hooyo