The Girls (Random House - RRP £6.50) is the highly anticipated debut novel by American author Emma Cline. Inspired by the notorious killings of Charles Manson and his cult, the novel is a floating, dreamlike haze of 1960s female vulnerability, intimacy and brutish survival.
Narrated from the present, the protagonist Evie Boyd looks back upon her fourteen-year-old self and her involvement in sadistic and violent crimes, never quite grasping how she ended up upon her path of destruction.
A painfully ordinary girl until this point, Evie falls in love with the wild and intoxicating Suzanne, one of the cult linchpins Russell Hadric’s many young female followers. Progressively spending more time at ‘the farm’, Evie soon begins to steal and lie for the approval of her newfound ‘family’.
A painfully ordinary girl until this point, Evie falls in love with the wild and intoxicating Suzanne, one of the cult linchpins Russell Hadric’s many young female followers. Progressively spending more time at ‘the farm’, Evie soon begins to steal and lie for the approval of her newfound ‘family’.