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Gillian Libby left New York City after many years and many jobs. She worked in PR/Marketing, film/TV, and was a SoHo shopgirl. She now lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children. She spends her winters trying to catch her kids on the slopes in Vermont.

Book Reviews

Discussion Questions

Quotes from Four Ways To Wear A Dress by Gillian Libby

I don’t think my parents are going to find any comfort in this explanation when I tell them I’ve been laid off. To them, it will be just one more reason to be worried that their daughter isn’t a capable, functioning adult. Which, in a way, is fair.

I’m not a violent person, but as I stand here on the sidewalk looking at Joss’s dark-blond hair and blue eyes, imagining him and the three other guys I know from other departments that haven’t been laid off laughing with Bob the Job around the stupid office Ping-Pong table, I wonder what would happen if I kneed him between the legs.

When the waiter comes over, I order a beer and then at the last minute shout at his back, “And the tater-tot poutine!” Because one, it’s amazing, and two, cheese-soaked carbs are good for sorrow and confusion. It’s a fact.

“I think their older sister, Amelia, runs the website and social media. Pete does more of the operations from what I understand,” I explain. Pete and Quincy are the fourth and fifth kids in their family (Quincy is number five, like quint. They’re very cute, this family.)

I pick up my phone and form my response carefully. Millie: Fuck it, I’m in. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that careful.

I know what she’s really saying. It sounds just like the kind of thing a grown woman with ADHD would do. And I get that. But this isn’t like when I was seventeen and got fired from the giant pretzel stand for goofing around and twisting the pretzels in shapes that were “unsuitable for sale.” Penises. I made penis pretzels. I’m not proud of it.

I started taking meds for my ADHD when I was twelve, and while I’m grateful for how they’ve made things easier for me in a lot of ways, my parents think because the medication helped me that it’s the answer to everything. Fired from a summer job? Maybe we should up the dose. Struggling to get college applications done on time? Let’s discuss it with the doctor. Luckily, I’ve always had good doctors who haven’t increased my dose whenever my parents brought me in, but it would be nice if that wasn’t their immediate answer for any behavior they found unnerving.

I wish I could believe she was right. That this dress has been sitting in this box waiting for me to need it so it could come out and work its magic on me the way it did for my friends. I have nothing to lose by giving it another shot. It does look great on me, at the very least.

Picking out a surfboard is a little like meeting a litter of puppies when you’re looking to adopt a dog. When you see the right one, you just know.

He smiles, he’s not a gloomy guy, but his smiles are small and controlled. Like he’s worried if he gives one out, he won’t be able to get it back.

“But don’t you think there’s something weird about presenting your entire life to strangers like that? I think Alana even posted pictures of her last home birth.” He shivers and I roll my eyes at him.

I don’t know much about homeschooling, but I do know it must take someone way more patient than me to manage all those different-aged kids and hopefully teach them anything other than how not to kill each other. Frankly, if I had half a dozen small children in my charge for a day, I would consider their survival a victory.

Coming here was a great idea. I would never have seen two different beaches, shopped at such a charming store with brands I’d never heard of, and biked to a dinner party (in the afternoon) if I were still on the East Coast. I would have been at work all that time. I’d still be at work, actually.

“Six a.m.,” he reminds me, like a stern professor who just gave me a deadline on a paper. I’ve never had professor-student fantasies until this exact moment.

It’s not like I’m proud of how often I find myself failing at life, but there is a little freedom in not having to feel like I have to hide it.

Quincy laughs as if she hadn’t thought about it this way. “A fair point, but you have to understand how bad things got during the pandemic. While some small towns saw a huge influx of new residents and local support, Peacock Bay was almost completely shut down. We rely on tourism here and we’ve barely recovered. I don’t think that makes the business owners all that confident.”

So, she is checking my account. “I’m not moving in with you, and I’m not getting my real estate license. I can do this, Mom.” The last thing I want is to be working with my parents, letting them monitor my every move and mistake. Nothing would prove I can’t function on my own more than that.

The reality is that this is just me. I screw up a lot, and maybe owning up to that, making mistakes and not hiding them for once, could help me feel okay about this part of myself that I’ve never felt comfortable with before.

Failure has never been a happy place for me. It brings up all those memories of struggling through elementary school until my parents had me tested for ADHD. How embarrassed I was thinking there was something wrong with my brain, but then how much easier things became in school when I began taking meds under a doctor’s care.

I follow the universal surfing rules of the lineup. I don’t steal waves. I wait my turn. I want to show the guys out here that I know what I’m doing and that I belong on these waves just as much as they do. But it really sucks that I feel like I have something to prove at all. Why can’t a girl just surf on her own and be respected for her skills the same way guys are? Why should I have to be extra careful about following the rules when the guys out here today probably aren’t even thinking about them?

“I brought the baby so you couldn’t yell at me.” “A sound strategy,” I tell him. “Plus, I know you like her better than me so she was likely to improve your general feelings about my being here.”

I really want to huff and puff my indignation a little bit longer, but this combination of sexy apologetic man holding eco-friendly goods is weirdly doing it for me.

It doesn’t take much time reading articles about women surfers to find something that shocks me. I learn that women only started being invited to the most famous of big wave contests, like the one at Jaws in Hawaii, in 2016. And even when Maya Gabeira surfed the biggest wave of the year in 2020, every article mentions how in her early career she was criticized for putting herself and others in danger by attempting these big waves. However, never once do I find an article that references something similar about a guy.

How can someone this good looking seem so uncomfortable in his own skin? If I had that skin, I would be walking around showing it off any chance I got. And I mean that in the least serial-killer way possible.

Still, I can’t remember the last time someone actually asked me on a date. Every other hookup or relationship I’ve had just sort of happened. Often ill-advised and hormonally charged. It’s possible I’m not great at dating.

If history and YouTube have taught us anything, it’s that people love to see other people make complete assholes of themselves.

“Great, so I’m never going to get my shit together?” “I just mean life has its ups and downs. You get through the downs and then you enjoy the ups. The important thing is to have people that will stick with you for both, and you have that. With your friends, and with us.”

My parents worry because they’re my parents, not because they think I’ll never get it right. Even if I get it wrong sometimes, they’re still going to root for me, and knowing this makes all the difference.

Just because we mess up doesn’t mean we ARE messed up.