Review: The Girls

The Girls by Emma Cline
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

I think the book is written very well for a debut. I liked the choppy sentences and literary turn of phrase that the author has. Who else would write a sentence like this: "Its pictures of genitally slick hams, wreathed in pineapple" when talking about pictures of food in McCall's magazine? I never thought of pictures of food in a magazine looking like genitals. Huh.

So much of it is from the POV of the older woman looking back on her life. And even the parts about her teenage life don't seem realistic to me--I don't think a naive 14-year-old would think like her. It's a slow read--it took me all week when I usually read quickly. Part of that is because I didn't like the main character--she's weak and the reader totally gets why she's sucked into a cult. Even as an adult, she says things like "I had no power" and she takes underage kids out to a bar and still thinks it's cool to buy them alcohol. I just don't get it.

I usually enjoy gross and sexy books, but this one has a 10-year-old girl dropping acid and threesomes between teen girls and fat men. All the men in this book want to seduce young teen girls.

Could I recommend this to a teenager? Nope, unless I magically meet someone like Serena van der Woodsen of Gossip Girls--weary, bitchy, and rich(y). This is another adult title that I think is for city women who ride subways (like White is for Witching), and not so much for Midwestern small town folks.

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