The Girls
Author: Emma Cline
Published by Dutton Books
Pages 364
Format Paperback
My Rating ★★★★
Published by Dutton Books
Pages 364
Format Paperback
My Rating ★★★★
The Worldwide bestseller
Evie Boyd is fourteen and desperate to be noticed. It’s the summer of 1969 and restless, empty days stretch ahead of her. Until she sees them. The girls. Hair long and uncombed, jewellery catching the sun. And at their centre, Suzanne, black-haired and beautiful.
If not for Suanne, she might not have gone. But, intoxicated by her and the life she promises, Evie follows the girls back to the decaying ranch where they live.
Was there a warning? A sign of what was coming? Or did Evie knw already that there was no way back?
Evie Boyd is fourteen and desperate to be noticed. It’s the summer of 1969 and restless, empty days stretch ahead of her. Until she sees them. The girls. Hair long and uncombed, jewellery catching the sun. And at their centre, Suzanne, black-haired and beautiful.
If not for Suanne, she might not have gone. But, intoxicated by her and the life she promises, Evie follows the girls back to the decaying ranch where they live.
Was there a warning? A sign of what was coming? Or did Evie knw already that there was no way back?
My thoughts:
The Girls is a 2016 debut novel by American author Emma Cline. It focuses on Evie’s encounters with the members of a cult that resembles the Manson Family, and it is easy to see why the book has become a worldwide bestseller.
At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, the main character Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately fascinated by their freedom, their carelessness and their dangerous aura of rebellion.
Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie, it is exotic, thrilling and charged—a place where she immediately feels desperate to be accepted. Her fascination with Suzanne and the others leads her down a grim path, a path with murder at its end.
Emma Cline’s writing is really absorbing and after just a few pages I couldn’t put the book down. The book offers a wonderfully unique representation of the young female psyche navigating insecurities, rebellion, and curiosities through adolescence. Being loosely based on the Charles Manson cult group and murders in the US in 1969, the story of The Girls is told from Evie’s perspective in two timelines – at age 14 when she became close with the group and in her later adult years as she reflects back on that part of her life.
Anyone who has ever Googled the stories surrounding Charles Manson knows where the book is heading from the start and Evie, hints at the impending crimes pretty heavily throughout the book. However, simply knowing there’s going to be a horrible sight doesn’t make it any easier to turn away from an impending car crash, and that is very much what most of this book feels like for the reader. You are constantly on edge, waiting for the worst yet to come. This, paired with Emma Cline’s deeply moving and descriptive writing style, keeps you guessing throughout and keen to read on. I found it an enjoyable read and also loved the way things concluded neatly. It is certainly a thought-provoking read which is at times very dark, but it is so unusual that I think it would be hard to really compare it to anything else around at the moment.
The Girls is definitely a book that grabbed me right from the start and didn’t let go until the last page was taken in.
Overall reaction:
The Girls is a 2016 debut novel by American author Emma Cline. It focuses on Evie’s encounters with the members of a cult that resembles the Manson Family, and it is easy to see why the book has become a worldwide bestseller.
At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, the main character Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately fascinated by their freedom, their carelessness and their dangerous aura of rebellion.
Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie, it is exotic, thrilling and charged—a place where she immediately feels desperate to be accepted. Her fascination with Suzanne and the others leads her down a grim path, a path with murder at its end.
Emma Cline’s writing is really absorbing and after just a few pages I couldn’t put the book down. The book offers a wonderfully unique representation of the young female psyche navigating insecurities, rebellion, and curiosities through adolescence. Being loosely based on the Charles Manson cult group and murders in the US in 1969, the story of The Girls is told from Evie’s perspective in two timelines – at age 14 when she became close with the group and in her later adult years as she reflects back on that part of her life.
Anyone who has ever Googled the stories surrounding Charles Manson knows where the book is heading from the start and Evie, hints at the impending crimes pretty heavily throughout the book. However, simply knowing there’s going to be a horrible sight doesn’t make it any easier to turn away from an impending car crash, and that is very much what most of this book feels like for the reader. You are constantly on edge, waiting for the worst yet to come. This, paired with Emma Cline’s deeply moving and descriptive writing style, keeps you guessing throughout and keen to read on. I found it an enjoyable read and also loved the way things concluded neatly. It is certainly a thought-provoking read which is at times very dark, but it is so unusual that I think it would be hard to really compare it to anything else around at the moment.
The Girls is definitely a book that grabbed me right from the start and didn’t let go until the last page was taken in.
Overall reaction:
