The Girls: A Novel

by Emma Cline

Test, 2016

Status

Available

Call number

PS3603.L547

Description

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.… (more)

Collection

Rating

½ (1049 ratings; 3.5)

Publication

Random House (2016), 368 pages

Pages

368

Physical description

368 p.; 5.5 inches

Awards

Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2018)
Shirley Jackson Award (Winner — Novel — 2016)
LA Times Book Prize (Finalist — Mystery/Thriller — 2016)
Indies Choice Book Award (Honor Book — 2017)
The British Book Industry Awards (Shortlist — Debut Fiction — 2017)

Media reviews

The Girls works a well-tapped vein in literary fiction: the queasy exploration of how young women with crippled egos can become accessories to their own degradation. Joyce Carol Oates and Mary Gaitskill are masters of this theme. Cline’s contribution is a heady evocation of the boredom and
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isolation of adolescence in pre-internet suburbia, in houses deserted by their restless, doubt-stricken adult proprietors where “the air was candied with silence.” The novel is heavy with figurative language; Cline has a telling fondness for the word “humid.” Not all of this comes off effectively (Evie’s mom makes Chinese ribs that “had a glandular sheen, like a lacquer”), but most of it does (Evie, dazzled by her father’s girlfriend, thinks she has a life “like a TV show about summer.”)
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LCC

PS3603.L547

Language

ISBN

081299860X / 9780812998603
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