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Loading... The Girlsby Emma Cline
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Books Read in 2017 (26) Books Read in 2016 (709) » 17 more Contemporary Fiction (10) Best Historical Fiction (438) Top Five Books of 2017 (633) Female Author (584) Indie Next Picks (48) Biggest Disappointments (150) Female Protagonist (840) First Novels (203) sad girl books (21) No current Talk conversations about this book. ![]() ![]() I couldn't have loved this more in the end. I found the initial chapters beautifully put together but just a touch too mannered, but then, once Evie comes into contact with the ranch, the book comes absolutely alive. It moves at this sinister, unstoppable lope and there is no description, word, or character that is spare to its purposes. Despite what reviewers and other readers say, for me it ends at precisely the right place. It's been ages since I read something I so wholeheartedly admired - I can't recommend it highly enough.
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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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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