The Girls: A Novel

Emma Cline

Jun 2016 · Sold by Random House

About this ebook

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

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: 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

Ratings and reviews

I can see how many won't like this book, but I found it interesting. It sort of rambles and bit and talks around what happened instead of about it as much. It's more inside the lead's head than showing these horrible facts that many may be looking to find in a story of a cult that commits murder. It's a think piece. She seems like so many other teens. Many are looking to find their place. They want to reject the things happening around them and find their people. They're so vulnerable and form attachments so easily. Even though she doesn't actually participate in the actual murders, she can't say that she wouldn't have, and she doesn't hate the ones that did. And now as an adult, she sees teens in just the same spot mentally that she was. It's just interesting to me how the average can turn into horrific.

This has been a great reading experience and the writing is simply descriptively stunning. It has a taut immediacy and depth of actual events and it becomes difficult to call it a work of fiction. It is intimately patterned after one of the most horrific events of the sixties and brings back 1969 with grim and unrelenting force. I very much recommend this book for anyone who prefers deeply psychological drama.

Great read!! So like the Manson saga, it might have just as well one of the girls around. But from her perspective. Haunting!

About the author

Emma Cline is the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls and the story collection Daddy. The Girls was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and the winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. Cline’s stories have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories. She was named a Guggenheim Fellow, received the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review and an O. Henry Award, and was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists.