No, seriously, read 'The Girls'
Every week, The Thread recommends a book that offers a fresh perspective on current affairs and culture.
When The Thread producer Tracy Mumford raves about a book, I listen — and add it to my own "must-read" list. She scours the book blogs for new voices and reads with a sense of adventure.
But when she recently declared that "cults were having their literary moment" and that I should read "The Girls" by Emma Cline, I was reluctant. Two reasons: Cline is a 20-something first-time novelist who got a three-book deal and a $2 million-dollar advance. Who wouldn't murmur, "Really? She's that good?" under their breath?
But honestly, it's the cult leaders that turned me off originally. Unshowered, scraggly, wild-eyed — I've never found them glamorous. And one of them shows up in this novel pretty quickly. But he's not who this story is about.
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"The Girls" is Evie's story. As an adult, she looks back on the summer she fell under the spell of Suzanne — young, beautiful and herself in thrall to the vacant and corrupt man who leads the Manson family-like cult.
Evie's adolescent vulnerability at 14, her confusion and yearning, are brought to life by prose that reads like the work of a master novelist. Evie is lonely and adrift and Cline captures it beautifully.
After describing Evie's nearly ritualistic reading of women's magazines, Cline writes: "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."
My Thread Must-Read of the week is Emma Cline's "The Girls." Tell me your favorite novel of the summer on Twitter @KerriMPR.