Anyone up for a summer read?
Emma Cline's novel, The Girls, 2016, takes the reader back in time to the
60s scene, California, and a family. The Manson Family.
Cline uses other names for
the people, who really lived and killed, but her factual account describes them
in the novel making clear, Cline has a deep understanding of the evidence and
what happened to the people who died. Readers like me are amazed at how
aptly Cline is able to show us how romantic ideals and notions of “the good
life” made these girls into prostitutes and killers. The really chilling part is that Cline’s
insights into her first-person character’s heart are still so true. Any woman honest about the pressures to find
and be somehow with the right man, or in this case, woman, will see herself and
be glad it’s 2016 and she is probably not a teenager.
This book is explicitly
sexual. Don’t read it if that stuff is
offensive to you. But if you’re on the
fence, trust Cline’s reserve and skill, she won’t embarrass you – you may not
pass the book to your husband, and that can be ok. A private space in our lives for entertaining
ideas we would rather keep to ourselves isn’t too much to ask, is it?
The Girls is a
page-turner. Read this book when you
have a day to yourself, preferably at a tropical resort far from the sixties
and California. No spoiler here, but if
you were alive when the Manson family was killing people, you know a fear that
never goes away. Cline reminded me of
that fact in a delicious escape from my own reality that surprisingly in the
end put me right back in my own real world.
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