Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Things Went Down We Don't Understand



Emma Cline “The Girls” (Random House, 2016)

This is one, if not the, hot books of the summer.  It’s lurid and yet well crafted – not a combination that you see every day.

Basically this is the story of a woman thinking back to when she was a young teenage girl who got involved with a Manson Family avatar.  And that’s a topic that is sure to get people’s attention, even now decades after the murders.

Cline manages to do something that is rare.  She tells the story in a way that we are sympathetic to her protagonist.  That even though she’s showing us a time and place that is dirty and stinky and hungry and just weird, we can see why she is attracted to the Family.

This is a powerful book, and a disturbing one.  It’s not that I always enjoyed it, but rather that it was a strong story well told.
 

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