"The Girls"

“The Girls”

Written by Emma Cline

Review written by Diana Iozzia

           

            Sigh. I really don’t like having to write a negative review, but this review is going to be pretty negative. I feel that if you read this before you read the book, you might come out with a poor impression or feel less likely to read the book.

            “The Girls” follows our main character, Evie Boyd, (honestly just had to look back into the book for that). Evie had a weird childhood, where she didn’t like her stepfather and her mom. Her father is absent, but she knows her father’s girlfriend, Tamar, pretty well. I really enjoyed her father and Tamar most out of all the characters, but they hardly have any presence, so I think you can infer something about that… The only sympathy I felt was for Tamar, Evie’s father, and the murder victims. I never felt sympathetic towards Evie. She was an unlikeable character, and it really rang true for the entire book.

            Evie meets Suzanne and a couple of other girls, who live in a little, crappy farm, but this world is enchanting to Evie. It’s practically a cult, but it’s mainly weird, sexual, drug addicts who live together and steal to survive. I was surprised that there wasn’t any religious aspect to this, because statistically, cults do follow religious patterns. The leader of this “cult” is Russell who finds himself competing with his friend, Mitch, who is a musician. Mitch is alluring and many of the girls like him. I honestly think that branding this as a “cult” makes it too buzz-wordy. This is hardly a cult, so that disappointed me.

            We also read Evie as a middle-aged woman who takes in her old roommate’s son and his girlfriend. This is just a really strange part of the story. Yes, I understand it’s metaphorical. Evie takes in and tries to protect the poor little girlfriend. It’s just weird. When we read this present-day part of the story, Evie, Julian, and Sasha talk about the cult and the murders the cult has committed. But of course, it’s like water in the desert. We receive so little and randomly about the murders, that you have to read the entire book to hear about the murders. The actual events are very similar to the Charles Manson murders, which is oh, so relevant now that he’s just died. Not to spoil, but if you’re uncomfortable with innocent people being ruthlessly murdered… Another thing that bothered me about the night of murders was that none of these characters had any violent tendencies, or seemed that they were that manipulated into killing. It felt just randomly thrown in at the end. Surely, you’d imagine that all along the characters were creepy, but the only creepy one was Russell, who takes on the Manson position of being absent that night.

            There are many aspects I didn’t like about this story. There is so much underage sex, in really gross, graphic detail. No, I didn’t think that a cult story would be absent of sex and drug abuse, but it’s a little too graphic for me. I mean every aspect of sex in this book is underage, so it’s a bit of a creepy factor. Also, I’m not usually the kind of person sensitive to this, but maybe it would have been a bit better to make the underage sex less glamorous?? It’s very warm and cuddly and nice, and I’d worry it may give a younger reader the wrong idea.

            Lastly, in every review, I always list off the last few things I have made a note to mention with page markers and sticky notes: I wanted to mention that the first few chapters were very intriguing, but that was it. I felt I had to push myself past a lot to get to the good parts. I didn’t skim through it, but I probably could have. Another thing that irritated me in the end was that Evie was complicit. She had a poor feeling that something was going to happen the night of, still planned to go along. She never confessed to being complicit in the end, which bothered me. Just a happy ending for her… I’m really glad that I didn’t spend any money on this, just a five-minute trip to the library. Oh, well.