"Summer Sisters" is probably my least autobiographical book. The whole idea started with rowing down the pond. And I heard an explosion. I don't like sudden loud noises. They scare me. And then all these people came running down the hill and jumped in the water in their finery and a bride and groom was with them, and that's where it all started.
"Summer Sisters" was actually was a huge influence on "Girls" because it was the first thing I ever consumed that sort of looked at the way that female friendship can be glorious and can be complicated and can be so like a worse betrayal than something romantic and it just showed these archetypes of femininity than totally sort of individuated them and exploded them.
I thought ["Summer Sisters" ] would be a children's book - two girls who summer together from very different backgrounds. And then when it just kept going and going and going. They kept getting older.
[With "Summer Sisters" the publisher] sent me on a big book tour. And it was the most wonderful professional experience of my life. I mean it was like Kleenex on every table wherever I was, friends patting friends on the back and they'd cry and I'd cry.
Kids should read whatever they want to read. So I'm hoping that just like 15-year-olds read "Summer Sisters," I'm hoping that they'll read this.
