The Girls

A Novel

By: Emma Cline

Narrated by: Cady McClain

The instant best seller

An indelible portrait of girls, the women they become, and that moment in life when everything can go horribly wrong

Named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post • NPR • The Guardian • Entertainment Weekly • San Francisco Chronicle • Financial Times • Esquire • Newsweek • Vogue • Glamour • People • The Huffington Post • Elle • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out • BookPage • Publishers Weekly • Slate

Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader. Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie it is exotic, thrilling, charged - a place where she feels desperate to be accepted. As she spends more time away from her mother and the rhythms of her daily life, and as her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realize she is coming closer and closer to unthinkable violence.

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award
Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
Emma Cline - One of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists

Praise for The Girls

“Spellbinding...a seductive and arresting coming-of-age story.” (The New York Times Book Review)

“Extraordinary... Debut novels like this are rare, indeed.” (The Washington Post)

“Hypnotic.” (The Wall Street Journal)

“Gorgeous.” (Los Angeles Times)

“Savage.” (The Guardian)

“Astonishing.” (The Boston Globe)

“Superbly written.” (James Wood, The New Yorker)

“Intensely consuming.” (Richard Ford)

“A spectacular achievement.” (Lucy Atkins, The Times)

“Thrilling.” (Jennifer Egan)

“Compelling and startling.” (The Economist)

©2016 Emma Cline (P)2016 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“[The Girls reimagines] the American novel... Like Mary Gaitskill’s Veronica or Lorrie Moore’s Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, The Girls captures a defining friendship in its full humanity with a touch of rock-memoir, tell-it-like-it-really-was attitude.” (Vogue)

“Debut novels like this are rare, indeed.... The most remarkable quality of this novel is Cline’s ability to articulate the anxieties of adolescence in language that’s gorgeously poetic without mangling the authenticity of a teenager’s consciousness. The adult’s melancholy reflection and the girl’s swelling impetuousness are flawlessly braided together.... For a story that traffics in the lurid notoriety of the Manson murders, The Girls is an extraordinary act of restraint. With the maturity of a writer twice her age, Cline has written a wise novel that’s never showy: a quiet, seething confession of yearning and terror.” (The Washington Post)

“Outstanding... Cline’s novel is an astonishing work of imagination - remarkably atmospheric, preternaturally intelligent, and brutally feminist.... Cline painstakingly destroys the separation between art and faithful representation to create something new, wonderful, and disorienting.” (The Boston Globe)

So disappointed

I kept waiting for more - the words were written beautifully but the story just never got there. The ending was nothing.

Memorizing

Loved this book. Takes place in the counterculture era and so entertaining and a good laid back "read"

excellent

an excellent book that you can't stop. loved it. A must read and we'll read

Fictionalization version of real events?

I need to preface this by saying that I was a criminology major and ingested every bit of material about Charles Manson I could get my hands on. This book is kind of a rip off in my mind of what happened in the Manson family right down to the cult living on a ranch, and a murder in the fancy part of town. I might have enjoyed it more had I not known so much about that story. The narrator is kind of a peripheral member of the cult so that did provide an interesting perspective. I felt that the Author may have gone back and added more flowery descriptors than necessary, but it was an entertaining
listen just the same.

Meh

Wasn't that interesting to me. Not what I expected and didn't keep my attention well.

Moody, psychological, but a familiar story

Would you recommend The Girls to your friends? Why or why not?

Maybe. It's an easy read, but can drag a bit at times. Depends on what they are looking for.

Have you listened to any of Cady McClain’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

This was my first time listening to a Cady McClain performance. I feel like it fit the mood and time period of the book well, especially when told through a 14 year old perspective for most of it. Very dreamy. It was a bit exaggerated, and that drew me out of the story at times, but overall it was fine.

Any additional comments?

I found this book moderately intriguing, and enjoyed how it made me question "What are the waves of thought that suck me in, for the sake of being liked or accepted? Do I get entranced by any ideas so much that I lose sight of the full picture, that may actually be ugly?" I like stories that make me question, and I liked this one because of that. I enjoyed Emma Cline's poetic style of writing, but I can see it being irritating if that isn't your taste. I thought she did a fine job for a debut novel. The whole book I felt like I was reading something familiar, but contrary to other reviews saying it was copying the Charles Manson story, I almost wonder if that was the point. That's why it felt familiar the whole time, because the plot is that story, but regardless, I enjoyed it because it gave me insight as to what it may have felt like to get sucked into a scenario such as that. If the plot resembling the Charles Manson family wasn't intentional, then that is weird for sure and not that cool haha.

Hated the characters and story, loved the writing

Where does The Girls rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Mixed emotions: the writing is stunning, amazing and so vivid. I kept wanting to care about the main character, but she was so shallow, spineless and void of personality. Most of the characters, in fact, came across to me as cardboard stereotypes. But, I kept listening because the writing was so fabulous.

Has The Girls turned you off from other books in this genre?

No. I grew up in the era -- and I live in the area, and I was glad to see the topic in a well-reviewed book.

What about Cady McClain’s performance did you like?

Her voice is cool but vivid and emotional. Very believable in all of the characters' voices.

Any additional comments?

Spoiler! The fact that the main character, in the end, says nothing of what she knows about the crime seems incredible, but looking back, one sees little sign of any nascent character arising within her. She is utterly dull and unadmirable, really.

Book was just OK

What did you like best about The Girls? What did you like least?

The whole story builds for something to happen, yet, nothing ever happens.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

The last hour of the book was the only interesting part.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Cady McClain?

Yes

Could you see The Girls being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Maybe a movie.

Any additional comments?

I'm a tad bit disappointed.

Predictable & Disappointing

Nothing really happens and when it does the narrator isn't there to tell us about it.

Woe Be, the Male-volent, Male-ficent Male-factors

"Snuffed-out Story of the ... Fugitive Without a Crime, Half Hoping and Half Terrified that No One was Ever Coming for Me" E. Cline, The Girl, p. 361.

If a novel maintains verisimilitude to the human condition, I do not have a problem if it negatively depicts a certain religion, race, gender or disability. It is art reflecting life so I hesitate to criticize painting good and evil into it. I say this to preface my thoughts, as a guy, on the underlying theme.

There's no doubt the protagonist Evie Boyd, at a very impressionable age of 14, had negative experiences with men and the only love of her life was a 19-year-old girl. I can understand her hatred of men. But, Geez Louise, every male that appears in the book, either in her long ago past, recent past or currently is portrayed as either evil or amoral. I do not recall a book so negative toward ALL men other than A Handmaid's Tale, with which I of course had no problem given its dystopian setting of a world ruled by despotic sexist men; yet even there Offred's husband was shown in a kind light. Not so in The Girls, not one man or boy is not wicked or weak, even the baby boy is bad.

I'll quote one passage in which it all became clear to me:

"The hatred she must have felt to do what she’d done, to slam the knife over and over again like she was trying to rid herself of a frenzied sickness: hatred like that was not unfamiliar to me. Hatred was easy. The permutations constant over the years: a stranger at a fair who palmed my crotch through my shorts. A man on the sidewalk who lunged at me, then laughed when I flinched. The night an older man took me to a fancy restaurant ... a famous filmmaker ... [joined our table]. The men fell into a heated discussion with no entry point for me: I fidgeted with my heavy cloth napkin, drank water. Staring at the wall. “Eat your vegetables,” the filmmaker suddenly snapped at me. “You’re a growing girl.” The filmmaker wanted me to know what I already knew: I had no power. He saw my need and used it against me. My hatred for him was immediate. ...The filmmaker laughed at me, and so did the others, the older man who would later place my hand on his dick while he drove me home. None of this was rare. Things like this happened hundreds of times. Maybe more. The hatred that vibrated beneath the surface of my girl’s face—I think Suzanne recognized it. ... There was so much to destroy."


I don't have a problem with the number of male monsters in this book. Frankly, my issue was not obviated until near the end in the above-quoted. At that point, I saw that not only did Ms. Cline use all the negative stereotypes (in itself, no big deal), but the entire tenor of the novel is an outright hatred of men as evil incarnate. Even this wouldn't put me off but for the fact that her casting (or any author's casting) all of a kind or type as culprits significantly diminishes realism and truth within the novel. That, I cannot forgive. As such, I'm knocking down to 3.3 stars, a story I'd otherwise give 4.1 stars.


Unlike other reviewers, it doesn't bother me that parts are over-written as tends to happen with newly-bronzed MFAs, or that the publisher probably overpaid (IMO, that's the publisher's problem, not the reader's).