The Girls by Emma Cline is a lightly fictionalized account of aspects of the Manson murders from the late 1960s. This is not a subject that would typically interest me; information and interpretations of that event, along with the cultural context of the Summer of Love era, abound. But this book offered a unique angle: the lens of a single girl — Evie Boyd — who is psychologically seduced by the cult’s leader (in the book, his name is Russell), and joins the “family” of, mostly, girl followers.

This book is thus part of the exploding category of revisionist history — the narrative approach in which a minor or overlooked character (usually a woman, often a wife or lover) retells a familiar story giving voice to the unheard. The fashion got its start (or at least a lot of momentum) with the success years ago of The Red Tent by Anita Diamant which brought to light the story of biblical Dinah. This story-telling approach allows the reader to consider a familiar story from a new vantage point. It’s an increasingly crowded field, making it tough to stand out. This book does. 

Emma Cline’s writing allows the reader to understand how a charismatic cult leader can ensnare young, impressionable people who are, in essence, waiting in the wings for their own lives to begin, but are not yet capable of handling, or understanding, adulthood. There is a moment of uncertain duration in the transition from girl to woman where simply belonging to something, anything, is fiercely intoxicating. Cline captures this trembling, excited uncertainty well, along with the complications that ensue when young women feel lust and love for the first time. It’s a moment of maturation during which attentive parents hover nervously, hoping any outcomes from a child’s impulses will be recoverable. Adulthood will not be destroyed. No such luck for Evie Boyd who during her coming-of-age moment is tragically caught in Manson’s web, embraced by the family of young girls, has a sexual awakening, and unwittingly becomes part of a series of events that permanently alters her life’s trajectory and horrifies the world.

The plot line of the Manson murders itself is not compelling. We know how it ends. But that’s the big picture story. The real plot in this book is intimate, it’s about how Evie both creates and reacts to the events of that summer. The writing is crisp, at some points lyrical, at others even startling. The startling part at first is wonderful, as Cline brings words together that aren’t easily juxtaposed: “The end had already arrived: each interaction was its own elegy.” Over time, however, the in-your-face style can begin to wear down a little, and drag on the momentum of the book itself, but this is a minor critique.

A surprise for me in this book was that this story is told from not one, but two points of view: that of Evie as a 14 year old and Evie as a middle-aged woman, three decades later. Cline is equally gifted in capturing older lonely Evie whose life has been cruelly shaped by the decisions of her unthinking, needy 14 year old self.