The Girls

The Girls
by Emma Cline
Published June, 2016

The Girls is probably not the best book I've read this year (which is not to say that it's not good, just that there's some pretty tough competition), but it has some of the best writing I've read in years. Emma Cline is an incredibly talented writer - she's like some kind of crazy talented word-magician with a real gift for bringing language to life.

Set largely in late-1960s California, The Girls follows naive fourteen-year-old Evie Boyd as she encounters a glamorously free-spirited group of older girls and is drawn into their lives in a seemingly peaceful sect, led by the charismatic (if slightly creepy) Russell. Evie starts to spend more time with the group and less time with her family and friends as events start to spiral towards ominously familiar consequences.  

I can't over-emphasise just how good the writing is in The Girls. I started out by highlighting the especially good passages but quite honestly, I'd given up on this by half-way through the book because there's just so much in there that's just beautifully written. The writing is particularly good and wonderfully insightful when it comes to the teenaged narrator's perspective. The Girls sums up so perfectly what it's like to be a teenaged girl - things that I'd forgotten I ever thought or wanted or believed - but reading this book brings it all back like it was yesterday (it wasn't yesterday. Scarily enough, it was a good 20 years ago).
"So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love. We spoke of our desperate need for them with rote and familiar words, like we were reading lines from a play".

Throughout The Girls, Evie makes some pretty stupid decisions. The plot of the book hinges on her doing these really dumb things (like hanging out with a cult, for one) and this would not be credible at all, except that these are exactly the kinds of decisions a star-struck teenager would make. The Girls reminds you of just how desperate teenagers can be - desperate for company, desperate for experience, desperate to be understood and desperate to be noticed - and in this context, everything makes perfect sense.

The Manson girls going to trial in 1970 - Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel & Laslie van Houten.

There are obvious parallels to the real-life Manson murders and while The Girls is not exactly a retelling of real-life events, it provides some fascinating insight into how such horrific events might have come about; it goes a long way towards explaining the seemingly unexplainable, which is a pretty impressive achievement.

Emma Cline's writing is beautiful, subtle and incredibly insightful. The Girls is very readable, fast-paced and never boring, providing a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a teenager going a little off-the-rails at a very unique time in history.

8/10