The Girls

Spoiler alert: A sad girl is will do whatever you say -- as long as you say you love her.

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The Girls by Emma Cline is a hauntingly realistic account of a very lost teen in the late sixties. The story is about Evie Boyd, a nondescript, observant, regular fourteen year-old who is caught up in the mundanity of life. She has a best friend, Connie, but eventually burns her bridges with her. Her mother, after a divorce, is desperate to get herself out there. One day she brings home Frank, who she is convinced is a fantastic father figure. However, when her mother leaves the room it is clear he is not. When Evie confronts her mom about it, she doesn't believe her -- because she doesn't want to, and yells at Evie to leave. Evie has no friends, no family, and no acquaintances in the area. So she hops on her bikes and rides blindly away. Ultimately, a familiar black van finds her lost and in a cloudy state of anger and sadness -- these emotions, she will learn, can be preyed off of. The people in the van, led by the beautiful and wild Suzanne, comfort Evie into giving her a ride, as she broke the chain on her bike. Evie had seen these people around before, at the park, at the grocery store, and every time she had been enthralled by their freedom, carelessness, and ignorance to what other people thought. She was honored to be included. She is taken to the "ranch," the hub and center of it all. Although later described as a dump, Evie sees the dwelling as humble and hopeful looking. She sees freedom everywhere she looks. Evie doesn't even notice that most of the people are young women. The people in the van, including Roos, Helen, Donna, Suzanne, and Guy tell Evie of their awesome leader, Russell. He is about to get a record deal, he saved them all from boring, meaningless, or "straight" lives. It all sounds like from a dream to Evie. The first night she spends on the ranch is a feast, Russell is kind and happy to meet her - but she will soon learn the many masks he can wear. The party is fun and simple, under a starlit sky, and for the first time Evie feels she belongs. As Evie begins to return to the ranch, and spend more and more time with them, her house and mom become more of a train station, just passing through occasionally. It is revealed through Evie's time at the ranch that currency is "love," and love is shapeless and polygamous. The children on the ranch are simply an affect of this "love," and the true mothers are not allowed to feel attached to their "affects." Although Evie never admits it, there are certain aspects of the constant "love" that she doesn't like -- that make her uncomfortable. She shakes it off though, because she wouldn't trade in her belonging for a feeling. After Evie gets in some trouble, she is sent to stay with her father and his girlfriend in Palo Alto. She doesn't mind them, or the stay, but starts to get restless. When they are at work one day, she hitchhikes al the way back to the ranch. She is so excited to be back, her feelings cloud her eyesight. If she were a passing stranger, she'd realize that the people roaming the ranch were gone, the food had become more scarce, and there were black marks beneath some of the girls' eyes. These are all affects of Russell not getting the record deal. After being ignored by Suzanne upon her arrival, she insists to go with her when she and some others leave in the van. Suzanne accepts - at first, but later kicks her out of the van with no explanation. Stranded and confused yet again, Evie calls her dad's girlfriend and returns to their house. On the news, Evie finds something grotesque and unnatural, there were murders at a familiar house -- the house of Russell's record producer. Through thoughtful insight, the carefree, dirty, and sometimes reckless living in backdrop of the sixties, and through this sad girl's perspective, is revealed the longing, the desperation, and the lengths to which one will go to to feel accepted. Throughout the story, women are regarded as background objects, and almost every male character is highly misogynistic and vulgar. Evie, although fictional, represents what all girls have felt at least once in their lives. She was weak and alone, and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was tricked by a psychopath, and fell in love with the girl with the wild, callous smiles, and the hands that would kill. Time goes on, but Evie is not unaffected, she goes through life with a certain expectation for things to go wrong, for her to be hurt simply because she was a woman. This hazard warning tale, is heartbreaking and realistic, because for some women, broken beyond repairing, there is no one to help heal, no one to make them better, and no one to truly love them.

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Favorite quotes: “That was part of being a girl--you were resigned to whatever feedback you'd get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn't react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they'd backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.” ~~ “Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of love. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get.” ~~ “Girls are the only ones who can really give each other close attention, the kind we equate with being loved. They noticed what we want noticed.” ~~ " I knew just being a girl in the world handicapped your ability to believe yourself. Feelings seemed completely unreliable, like faulty gibberish scraped from a Ouija board." ~~ "I thought that loving someone acted as a kind of protective measure, like they'd understand the scale and intensity of your feelings and act accordingly. That seemed fair to me, as if fairness were a measure the universe cared anything about.” ~~ “My glitchy adolescent brain was desperate for causalities, for conspiracies that drenched every word, every gesture, with meaning.”