The Girls

On today’s episode of “finally reading books I’ve meant to read for like two years” is The Girls by Emma Cline. I didn’t know much about it, but I heard how good it was, and since I was going to see the new Quentin Tarantino movie about the Manson murders (loosely) so I thought it was high time to finally read it.

The Girls is told from the present and the past. We meet Evie Boyd as an older woman, living in a friend’s house on his charity, and then we also meet Evie Boyd as a 14 year old drawn into a group of girls who nearly worship a man, Russell, who runs a commune-like cult and promises to be the next great musician. There’s drugs, sex, and dumpster diving as Evie spends a summer out of the view of her divorced parents and ex-friends and falling deeper into the circle of Suzanne and her girlfriends. Tensions flare, betrayals occur, and the week before Evie is getting shipped off to boarding school there’s a murder, reminiscent of the Sharon Tate murders, and Evie is left wondering what her role in everything was and could have been.

This book was really good. I could 100% watch the parallels of the Manson murders unfold across the page, but I was enthralled by Evie’s view on Suzanne and her own parental situation. The writing was beautiful, poignant, and haunting. Even though you KNOW what’s going to happen, you still can’t help but watching it unfold.