The Girls: A Novel - Softcover

Cline, Emma

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812988027 ISBN 13: 9780812988024

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2017

Synopsis

THE INSTANT BESTSELLER · An indelible portrait of girls, the women they become, and that moment in life when everything can go horribly wrong

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Washington Post · NPR · The Guardian · Entertainment Weekly · San Francisco Chronicle · Financial Times · Esquire · Newsweek · Vogue · Glamour · People · The Huffington Post · Elle · Harper’s Bazaar · Time Out · BookPage · Publishers Weekly · Slate

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.

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize · Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award · Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize · The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice · Emma Cline—One of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists

Praise for The Girls

“Spellbinding . . . a seductive and arresting coming-of-age story.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Extraordinary . . . Debut novels like this are rare, indeed.”—The Washington Post

“Hypnotic.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Gorgeous.”—Los Angeles Times

“Savage.”—The Guardian

“Astonishing.”—The Boston Globe

“Superbly written.”—James Wood, The New Yorker

“Intensely consuming.”—Richard Ford

“A spectacular achievement.”—Lucy Atkins, The Times

“Thrilling.”—Jennifer Egan

“Compelling and startling.”—The Economist

About this title

Review

An Amazon Best Book of June 2016: I was put off by the idea of this book--the twentysomething author is writing about the 60s, an era that may even predate her parents; it features a very Manson-like cult (really, is there anything more to say?) and, well, it comes with a lot of pre-publication “buzz.” So hear this: The Girls really is as good as they’re saying. First of all: it’s called The Girls for a reason; While this mesmerizing debut does involve a charismatic Mansonesque leader in California in the late 1960s, it is more focused on the girls in his cult, the ones who enthrall 14 year old Evie Boyd, a self-conscious child of divorce, privilege and malaise. The tale of the girls and the cult and the ultimate violence they commit is told by Evie, now a middle aged woman with regrets. Some of the parallels Cline tries to draw between the teenaged Evie’s rage and that of some current young people in her life can be strained but Cline’s observations are preternaturally mature and her writing strong. (A character the girls are attempting to rob lies “on her kitchen floor, calling my name like a right answer.”) The subject matter may be familiar--and I don’t just mean Manson, I mean the way teenagers can be terrified and terrifying all at once--Cline’s The Girls is surprisingly timeless and perfectly creepy. --Sara Nelson, The Amazon Book Review

About the Author

Emma Cline was the winner of The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize in 2014. She is from California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0812988027
• ISBN 13: 9780812988024
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 384