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Loading... The Girls: A Novel (edition 2016)by Emma Cline (Author)
Work InformationThe Girls by Emma Cline
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. representation for girls who were weird and horny but didn't know what to make of it at 14!! ( ) Emma Cline's prose and imagery is absolutely wonderful here- she paints such tangible and unique expressions of feelings and people and moments. I think she gave a very strong voice to Evie, the young teenage protagonist. One of the things I enjoyed (and appreciated) most about "The Girls" was Cline's insight on girlhood. She's really captured something special in here, and, having been a hormonal, confused, and curious teenage girl myself, I truly loved reading about Evie. Despite the fact that I've been been in a cult or lived in the 70s, Evie felt remarkably relatable. I've seen several people compare "The Girls" to Jeffery Eugenides "The Virgin Suicides", and I had the same thought while reading this. Both novels offer up a raw look at the life of girls, and neither shy away from the sexuality, the uncomfortable moments, the desires, or the social issues girls have or encounter. There is a quote near the beginning of the novel that really pulled me in: “I waited to be told what was good about me. [...] All that time I had spent readying myself, the articles that taught me life was really just a waiting room until someone noticed you- the boys had spent that time becoming themselves.” Cline mentions again and again, in different ways and without spelling it out, the fact that girls are expected to put on a show of sorts for boys, and are expected to primp themselves for the boys wants and needs. Girls behave and try to get a man, while the men do whatever the heck they feel like doing. And the plot of the novel very much backs this up, in a way that is both horrifying and effective. Another quote: “That was part of being a girl--you were resigned to whatever feedback you'd get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn't react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they'd backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.” I think the only thing that felt a little imbalanced was the focus on the cult. The climax of the cult narrative feels a bit cut short, and I wanted to know more about AFTER that moment. The ending, while still good, just felt a bit incomplete. Another 100-150 pages would have been fantastic! I would reread this. I WANT to reread this, and explore it again with a pen, marking bits and taking more from it. I try to not let reviews guide my reading but in this case I saw so many positive reviews from people I trust so I went against my instinct to read this book. It was a mistake. I guess it speaks to the skill of the author that I was so repelled by the characters. I felt dirty by association just reading about them. I never understood why our main character became enthralled with the cult and I didn't really appreciate her as an adult either.
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 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.”) Belongs to Publisher SeriesOtavan kirjasto (258) AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
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. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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