Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares [96]
A lot of readers asked me to bring Eric back, and at first I didn’t want to. There is the kind of love that takes and the kind that gives, and you don’t usually find both with the same person. But then I thought about it more and I realized that he offered this great opportunity for her to shore up her past, to demonstrate to herself that she’s grown, that she can be different. The first summer with Eric, she tries to captivate him with this false idea of herself. She ends up feeling frail and used. But it’s not fair to say that Eric used her, precisely. More painful is Bee’s knowledge that she used herself.
In this third book, Bridget presents herself honestly to Eric, both in strength and in weakness. She has to really fight with herself to keep honest, but she does. At the end of the summer, she knows he loves her for who she actually is. On a deep level she knows that’s the kind of love that sustains.
Q. Tibby, Carmen, and Bridget find love in Girls in Pants. Lena is the only one of the four left without a romantic relationship. But Lena was the one who originally had the most trouble believing in love, and letting herself fall for Kostos. Why did you choose to leave her out of a new experience in love?
A. Love-wise, poor Lena has been through the wringer. Because I am supposedly the ruler of their world, I mostly try to arrange love to happen for them when it is right and good. And I think Lena has a way to go before she’s ready to try it again. She’s been too much defined by the people she loves, too much at the margins of her own life. I think she needs to take herself seriously, to take more of a stand for herself, which is largely what she’s up to in this third summer.
Q. Throughout Girls in Pants, the girls seem hesitant about how their relationships with friends and family will change when they’re apart for the year. How did your relationships change when you left home for your first year of college?
A. Inevitably, relationships do change. I’ve held on to some good friends, and a few others have gradually slipped away (I from them or they from me—it is always hard to say). Relationships in close proximity seem to roll along with a certain organic momentum. Relationships at a distance require a bit more prodding. They are more likely to slow and stop, and you need to be ready to restart them. I’m not so great at that.
It’s funny. I’ve always idealized great relationships as a meeting of minds and souls, but as I get older I realize how much it matters that you get to gossip over donuts.
Q. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, your debut novel, became a major motion picture, bringing even more acclaim to your already successful series. How did it feel watching your story unfold on the big screen?
A. It was thrilling and also strange. Watching the movie, I felt connected to it, but I also felt like it was something apart from me and the work I do. It’s fascinating to have a lot of creative minds lend their gifts to a project like that. It gave me insight into the story and characters. It allowed me to see it in different ways.
Writing is solitary, of course. Sometimes you feel like your ideas echo around in your brain, and you wonder if they relate to anything real or meaningful in the world. The quality of the movie, the hard work it represented from the director and the actors and many others, made me feel like I had played a role in something both real and meaningful.
Q. Would you eventually like to see Second Summer, Girls in Pants, and Sisterhood #4 made into movies? Do you think about how a director would interpret your story while you’re writing Sisterhood #4?
A. I had such a good experience watching the adaptation of the first book that I would happily look forward to more. I trust that a movie can absolutely do justice (and more) to a book. At the same time, my books and characters have lives apart from movies. They will go on, unimpeded, whether or not they ever get filmed again. As a writer, I think in terms of books. I leave movies to the experts.