Dirtbags

Longlisted for the ReLit Award

Editor's Pick, Vancouver Sun

Dirtbags is a novel about reckoning - with one's past, one's choices, and one's expectations for the future. Spider is a scrappy kid growing up in rural B.C., and when a tragic event causes her world to implode she heads to Vancouver for solace, distraction, and experience.

We witness a shifting morality as Spider moves through chaos and anarchy, often of her own choosing, with no certainty of truth besides what is found in brief encounters. She soaks up the world around her, getting swept up in an accelerated scene of punk music, partying, booze and drugs, but she is forever dogged by a nagging question from her past: "When everything in your life is fleeting, what do you hold onto?"

Dirtbags deals with the bonds between women, the cycle of poverty, self-destruction, loss of family, the outlaw code, and the fragile beauty of the human condition.

This is Teresa McWhirter's follow-up novel to Some Girls Do.

Praise for Dirtbags:

"Some of our most treasured stories are rooted in the present, and the last novel in hand for this review is relentlessly contemporary. Teresa McWhirter's very impressive second novel, Dirtbags, is a coming-of-age novel set in 21st-century Vancouver. McWhirter is a mistress of momentum. Her energetic account of her female protagonist's love life and adventures with drugs and drunkenness in Vancouver's Eastside punk scene is a wonderful sequel to her first book, Some Girls Do. Her descriptions are deft, her prose clear and energetic. We will hear great things from this promising West Coast writer, and Dirtbags will take its place in any sensibly constructed future Canadian canon. This is a great book and a funny, moving and entertaining read."

The Globe and Mail

"McWhirter does a good job of accurately reflecting some larger social problems in Vancouver. The first line of the book, ‘Vancouver is a place that can kill people with loneliness. Cold, grey rocks break up beaches. It is a city full of powders. A city filled with rain,' encapsulates this city for me. Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and is also one of the darkest, dampest and coldest. ... The subject matter may make some people uncomfortable, but it's a good story with well developed characters. ... if you are looking for a good read I recommend Dirtbags. It's gripping, real, and is very hard to put down once you start reading it."

Grab News: Muse News from Vancouver

"This affecting and affectionate story of a soft-spoken punk's struggle to find something to believe in follows Spider Rose McKenzie as she navigates through the treacherous waters of her early 20s. McWhirter sketches vivid portraits of people on the periphery, from punk-rock burnouts on Vancouver's East End to broken mill workers in Spider's B.C. Interior hometown. Her clear, emotionally detached voice serves the story superbly, refusing to pass judgment even as the character's actions lead them to ruin. This search for beauty amid chaos and anarchy resonates long after the last page is turned."

Fast Forward Weekly