The Girls by Emma Cline
Rating: ★★★★★
I picked this up just before Halloween, not because I thought it was a thriller, but because I saw it in my library and I had to grab it before someone else did. I had no idea how Halloween appropriate this book would be. There are no ghosts or goblins. Humans are the monsters in this story, specifically the girls. Emma Cline concocted a retelling of the Manson Murders that brings the killers so close to ourselves that we can almost step into their shoes.
There is so much truth in this novel it's a little difficult to digest. As human beings we need to be recognized as valuable. We need attention. Many of us find that in our friends and family. If our friends or family decided to cross the line between good and evil, would we follow? Would we even hesitate? The honest answer is I don't know. Maybe.
The opening line of this book pulled me in immediately. It begins, "I looked up because of the laughter, and kept looking because of the girls" (3). Oh my goodness, every time I read it I get more excited. This first line brilliantly establishes the other-worldliness of these girls. They are carefree, full of fun, beautiful, different but somehow a little off, somehow a little dangerous. We immediately begin to understand Evie's fascination with them. Bravo Emma Cline. Bravo.
Emma Cline also mastered transitions in this novel. The book shifts between two time periods, 1969 when Evie was 14, and the present day where she encounters a young woman that reminds her, uncomfortably, of herself. One particular moment that made me stop and take a moment to marvel at Cline was the very beginning of part two. We end part one with Evie falling asleep in Suzanne's bed. We begin part two with older Evie waking up in the present day. Transitions like this occur continuously, seamlessly transporting us between past and present.
I have so much to say about this book, so if you've read it or you don't mind being spoiled a little, PLEASE keep reading.
SPOILERS
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This book is not only eerily consuming, but I think it is also important. It explores our limits as human beings. What defines the line between good and evil? How do we know we will never cross it? CAN we know we will never cross it? I think this book shows that we can't be sure. Cline writes about the ranch as if it were a patch of paradise. She doesn't hide the garbage, the hunger, and the dirt from us, but she shapes it into a sculpture of freedom and open mindedness. As readers, we understand its danger, but we still want to spend time there.
At first it is natural wonder how the girls could ever be sucked in by Russell. The answer comes to us very quickly. Russell is an disarmingly charismatic man. He gives them the attention they so desperately crave, so they become dependent on him- hopelessly devoted to him. These girls come from homes in which their parents barely notice when they're gone, or when their clothes are covered in dirt. Russell become their real home. That's when he begins to take advantage of them. He convinces each girl that its all about love. He is making the world a better place, and they believe him because it would be too problematic for things to be any other way.
Evie is a little different. She's not there for Russell. She's there for Suzanne, but the devotion is still the same. She wants to twist anything Suzanne says or does to benefit her own fantasy.
Evie was with them on the night of the murders. Suzanne kicked her out of the car. Why? She will never know. What if she had gone with them?
The telling of the murders is done in a brilliantly horrifying way. Cline doesn't drag it out. She doesn't add flowery descriptions. She just bluntly tells it as it happened: concise and terrifying. Each new paragraph made me wince, gasp, or squirm in my seat. Little turns of phrase highlighted the brutal horror of the scene.
When Gwen raises her freshly washed face from the sink and first sees Suzanne in the mirror (one of my worst fears by the way) she "thought it was a friend of Mitch's or Scotty's, though within seconds it must have been obvious that something was wrong. That the girl who smiled back (because Suzanne did, famously, smile back) had eyes like a brick wall" (325). This image gives me chills. What could be more terrifying?
The innocent description of the boys reaction makes the whole situation even more sickening. "The boy didn't cry until later; Donna said he seemed interested at first, like it was game. Hide and go seek, red rover, red rover" (325). The words "red rover, red rover" repeated twice, nodding at the quantity of blood about to be spilled.
The telling of the murder pauses a moment and cuts to the future: Russell in the court room "laughing so hard he was choking. 'You think I made them do anything? You think these hands did a single thing?' The bailiff had to remove him from the courtroom, Russell was laughing so hard" (326). It seems almost too cruel to cut such a story with laughter.
I found Gwen's death especially disturbing. The horrible chase scene and stabbing taking place in just five sentences, ending with "Crawling over her back, stabbing until Gwen asked, politely, if she could die already" (327). Like a knife to my own heart, this last sentence made me ache for this young woman who, even in death, refused to abandon her manners.
The boy is the last to die. Suzanne reached out for him. "'Come on,' she said one last time, and the boy inched toward her. Then he was in her lap, and she held him there, the knife like a gift she was giving him" (329). It's so brutally simple, its impossible to read on after that. I had to take a moment and look at a picture of my little sister, to remind myself that she is okay.
Perhaps more horrifying than all of that is that, even though Evie knows what Suzanne did, she still misses her. She almost wants to leave with them when they come to her boarding school. She is so blinded by her need for Suzanne's love, attention, and approval.
"There are times I try to guess what part I might have played. What amount would belong to me. It's easiest to think I wouldn't have done anything, like I would have stopped them, my presence the mooring that kept Suzanne in the human realm. That was the wish, the cogent parable. But there was another possibility that slouched along, insistent and unseen. The bogeyman under the bed, the snake at the bottom of the stairs: maybe I would have done something, too. Maybe it would have been easy" (321).
"We all want to be seen" (352).
There is so much truth here it's difficult to digest. As human beings we need to be recognized as valuable. We need attention. Many of us find that in our friends. If our friends decided to cross the line between good and evil, would we follow? Would we even hesitate? The honest answer is I don't know. Maybe.
Favorite Quotes:
"I looked up because of the laughter, and kept looking because of the girls" (3).
"I rarely saw anyone outside. The only teenagers in town seemed to kill themselves in gruesomely rural ways" (10).
"Sat in front of my mother's lighted mirror with its different settings: Office. Daylight. Dusk. Washes of colored light, my features spooking and bleaching as I clicked through the artificial day" (67).
"You wanted things and you couldn't help it, because there was only your life, only yourself to wake up with, and how could you ever tell yourself what you wanted was wrong?" (278).
"We all want to be seen" (352).
