Book

The Girls: A Novel

THE INSTANT BESTSELLER • An indelible portrait of girls, the women they become, and that moment in life when everything can go horribly wrong NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • The

(20 total)

Characters

Emma Cline (20)

“They didn't have very far to fall--I knew just being a girl in the world handicapped your ability to believe yourself. Feelings seemed completely unreliable, like faulty gibberish scraped from a Ouija board. My childhood visits to the family doctor were stressful events for that reason. He'd ask me…”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

“How sad it was to realize that sometimes you never got there. That sometimes you lived a whole life skittering across the surface as the years passed, unblessed.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

“So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love. We spoke of our desperate need for them with rote and familiar words, like we were reading lines from a play. Later I would see this: how imperson…”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

“That was part of being a girl--you were resigned to whatever feedback you'd get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn't react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they'd backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

“I waited to be told what was good about me. 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.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

“There would be no heroics, I understood. Just the dull terror, the physical pain that would have to be suffered through”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“The intensity of his attention seemed exposing, and I laughed a little. I was just starting to learn how to be looked at. I took a deep drink. The glass was full of vodka, cloudy with the barest slip of orange juice.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“I looked up because of the laughter, and kept looking because of the girls. I noticed their hair first, long and uncombed. Then their jewelry catching the sun.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“These long-haired girls seemed to glide above all that was happening around them, tragic and separate. Like royalty in exile.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“These long-haired girls seemed to glide above all that was happening around them, tragic and separate. Like royalty in exile.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“the gaudy, prickling tease that was almost the same thing as beauty.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“The hatred that vibrated beneath the surface of my girl's face-- I think Suzanne recognized it. Of course my hand would anticipate the weight of a knife. The particular give of a human body. There was so much to destroy.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“I dressed to provoke love, tugging my neckline lower, settling a wistful stare on my face whenever I went out in public that implied many deep and promising thoughts, should anybody happen to glance over.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“I knew just being a girl in the world handicapped your ability to believe yourself. Feelings seemed completely unreliable, like faulty gibberish scraped from a Ouija board.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“Adults always teased me about having boyfriends, but there was an age where it was no longer a joke, the idea that boys might actually want you.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“That was part of being a girl--you were resigned to whatever feedback you'd get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn't react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they'd backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“That was our mistake, I think. One of many mistakes. To believe that boys were acting with a logic that we could someday understand. To believe that their actions had any meaning beyond thoughtless impulse.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of love. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like 'sunset' and 'Paris.' Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the ha…”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“I waited to be told what was good about me. [...] 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.”

— Emma Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism