3.7 out of 4 stars.
DID THIS REALLY HAPPEN?! Is all I kept saying while reading Emma Cline’s “Girls” which is based upon the “Manson Family”. If you live under a rock or are just a baby – Charlie Manson created a cult in California during the late 1960s that ended up killing 9 people over ONE summer. That is 5 weeks. He would instruct his followers or as he endearingly called them “his family” to gruesomely kill his targets who were basically strangers to him. In other words he snapped and was able to convince others that he was a source that should be looked up to and it worked! Hello old school Scientology.
My mother read “Helter Skelter” by Vincent Bugliosi when she was younger and she was curious to see if I would be as hooked and equally as disgusted by this troublesome time in history as she was. Turns out I am. The term “Helter Skelter” is from The Beatles song of the same name that McCartney wrote referencing the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Manson believed his mission was to bring down the current society and recreate it.
To make matters even more wild, this book, “Girls” was written by Emma Cline who just got a 2 million dollar signing bonus from Random House to publish this book and she is only 25 years of age! Not only is that a feat in itself but the pure maturity and knowledge that Cline writes with is as if she was committing these crimes herself. The details are so eery and jaw dropping that I couldn’t help but keep turning the pages. I must worn those that are the faint of heart that this book is very graphic and features a lot of adult content. It is chalk full of sex, drugs, and violence.
Considering that Cline is younger than me, I have no idea how she transported her mind to that decade and recreated it so accurately. She is an author that I would be curious to meet at a book tour to see why she became so fascinated by this story and what other types of work she is planning on writing in the future.
Overall a great debut for a young writer about a chilling, haunting, and overall spellbinding point in history.
Unfortunately, Sadie has been sleeping under the bed for a week after reading this she was so scared.
