The Girls

This book examines what it's like to be a young teen girl in a way I've never seen done so well. Cline masters the awkwardness, the need to be wanted, the struggle to belong, the blossoming of sexuality, the ability to see parents as humans with flaws, and the idolization of those who seem outwardly to have it all. She so expertly delves into how thoughts and ideas and emotions shape Evie as she searches for herself. Some of these thoughts are so deeply painful, yet so beautiful to read:

“Even possessing that small amount of money tindered an obsessive need in me, a desire to see how much I was worth. The equation excited me. You could be pretty, you could be wanted, and that could make you valuable.”

And this one:

“I wanted to be told what was good about me. I wondered later if this was why there were so many more women than men at the ranch. All that time I had spent readying myself, the articles that taught me life was really just a waiting room until someone noticed you – the boys had spent that time becoming themselves.”

I lost myself in this book. I connected on a visceral level to parts of Evie's experience, having been an adolescent girl myself. My thoughts, of course, were never as profound as Cline's artful (and sometimes disturbing) portraits of what's going on in Evie's mind.

Read my full review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/05/arc-review-girls-emma-cline/