Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jun 2016
368 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Girls - their vulnerability, strength, and passion to belong - are at the heart of this stunning first novel for readers of Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides and Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad.
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, and to that moment in a girl's life when everything can go horribly wrong.
Emma Cline's remarkable debut novel is gorgeously written and spellbinding, with razor-sharp precision and startling psychological insight. The Girls is a brilliant work of fiction - and an indelible portrait of girls, and of the women they become
"Starred Review. Its similarities to the Manson story and crimes notwithstanding, The Girls is less about one night of violence than about the harm we can do, to ourselves and others, in our hunger for belonging and acceptance." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Although inspired by the infamous Charles Manson murders, Cline's impressive debut is more a harrowing coming-of-age exploration of how far a young girl will go (and how much she will give up of herself) in her desperate quest to belong. Beautifully written and unforgettable." - Library Journal
"Vivid and ambitious." - Kirkus
"The Girls is a brilliant and intensely consuming novel - imposing not just for a writer so young, but for any writer, any time." - Richard Ford
"Emma Cline's first novel positively hums with fresh, startling, luminous prose. The Girls announces the arrival of a thrilling new voice in American fiction." - Jennifer Egan
"I don't know which is more amazing, Emma Cline's understanding of human beings or her mastery of language." - Mark Haddon, New York Times bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
"Emma Cline has an unparalleled eye for the intricacies of girlhood, turning the stuff of myth into something altogether more intimate. She reminds us that behind so many of our culture's fables exists a girl: unseen, unheard, angry. This book will break your heart and blow your mind." - Lena Dunham
This information about The Girls was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Emma Cline is from California. Her fiction has appeared in Tin House and The Paris Review, and she was the recipient of The Paris Review's Plimpton Prize for Fiction in 2014.
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