Since I am the type of person (is there such a type) who created a Google alert for “Leslie van Houten” (so that I can have up-to-date information on her various parole hearings), the subject of The Girls: A Novel
And I feel the same way about Cline’s novel which details a summer in the life of a 14-year-old girl in California in 1969, who finds herself somehow hanging out with a group of hippies – mostly women, plus a charismatic male leader at the center – who live out on an abandoned ranch. The narrator is captivated by the group dynamic, the freedom, and turns a blind eye (sometimes consciously) to the more disturbing things she sees. The hippies eventually, for complicated reasons, break into the house of a famous musician and kill everyone who is there.
If you know the Manson story inside and out, you will see where Cline borrowed from it (heavily) and you’ll see where Cline deviated (in some pretty important ways). The characters are eerily familiar (if you’ve read Helter Skelter, even down to Dennis Wilson, of The Beach Boys, who – briefly – got sucked into Manson’s web, drawn by the easy access to all of those available women out on the ranch). There’s a 1-to-1 connection in some cases: Suzanne = Susan Atkins. Donna = Patricia Krewinkle. Helen = Leslie van Houten. Roos = Mary Brunner. Russell = Manson. Guy = Tex Watson. The murder has been changed slightly, although there is a caretaker involved (just like there was at Cielo Drive), and a bunch of people who weren’t supposed to be there.
“Evie,” the narrator, is unhappy at home, but there’s nothing really awful going on. Her parents are separated, and both are dating again. Evie doesn’t like that. She’s being sent to boarding school in the fall. She’s stopped hanging out with her best friend. And one day she sees three girls floating through the park, girls who are filthy, in ragged dresses, but who exude a kind of ferocious and compelling power. Self-possessed, haughty, regal even, but also raunchy (one pulls down her dress to expose her breast, laughing), the girls are then seen digging through a dumpster for food, before being chased off the property and then picked up by a big black-painted bus, which roars off to parts unknown.
The way Cline writes about the effect that those “girls” have on Evie – and the way Cline writes about female interactions in general – is one of the main unforgettable qualities of the book. Cline understands what girls provide other girls. Cline understands that much of what is important in a girl’s life has to do not with getting reactions from boys, but reactions from other girls. Performing for your own gender. Checking out members of your own gender. Compare and contrast. Maybe it’s that the “male gaze” is so prominent, such a default, that women look at each other with the eyes of the “male gaze,” in an assessing way, almost like: “I’d tap that” or “Hell, no, I wouldn’t tap that.” In such a world, true friendship between girls is impossible. You can’t get past it. You’re performing for the men around you … and you’re performing amongst yourselves … both as a way to dominate, but also as a way to “present” to the watching males. Go visit a high school cafeteria. That’s half of what’s going on, at all times. Meanwhile, the boys drift by oblivious, having NO IDEA of the sheer amount of drama that they cause. And it’s not their fault that they’re oblivious. They’re LUCKY to be oblivious. So much of this rang true from my own high school days, where our various crushes were invested with so much power that our emotions floated around the earth in orbit, as opposed to having any connection with any version of reality.
Cline is very very good at capturing this dynamic, in striking prose that gets into your head. There’s a compelling line on almost every page, piercing observations tossed off with casual grace, but flourishing with verbal control. She’s a show-offy writer, and in her case it’s a compliment, since so much of it works so well. It’s attention-getting writing. Rachel Kushner’s is as well. Kushner is superior to Cline (and almost anyone else writing right now) because you don’t feel the “show off” in her writing at all. But still you wonder: HOW is she DOING this?? It’s a distinctive style. The Flamethrowers also involves a cult-like atmosphere (in the second half of the book, which takes place in a fracturing Italy in the 1970s), and also understands the detached and heartless quality so common in self-defined “revolutionaries.” Great book. Have I said that already? Read it. I appreciate Cline’s “attention-getting’ style in The Girls, especially in a world where so much prose sounds the same, where everyone comes out of MFA programs with the same style (one of the main strikes against such programs where a bunch of writers work together in a workshop setting: there becomes a “group” style that is accepted as the norm, and everyone critiqued to move into the same style). Cline finds adjectives and images that suit her story, increasingly hallucinatory, as though the whole thing is happening in a haze of smoke (as, indeed, the summer of 1969 must have felt like, especially in California).
The book is quite frightening, especially since it’s told basically in flashback, from a middle-aged Evie’s perspective, so the narrative is punctured with phrases like “I can see now that …” Or “This wouldn’t become clear until later …” It’s chilling, because it shows the fragility of youth, how vulnerable we are when we are teenagers to outside influences. Historically, cults have had the most success recruiting on college campuses, a time when teenagers are away from home for the first time, looking for structure and community. It’s sinister. Tory Christman, famous “defector” from Scientology and now one of its most vocal critics, says repeatedly in her Youtube messages: “You don’t join a cult. A cult finds you.” That’s what happens to Evie. She’s in the middle of a “lost” summer, in transition, with minimal parental involvement. It’s also the 1960s so parents didn’t hover over their kids. She’s growing apart from her best friend, she’s curious about sex and has no experience, she’s disturbed by her new view of her parents as silly and ineffective, and she’s about to go off to boarding school. In that in-between-moment, she is ripe for the plucking. And pluck her they do.
In a way, the deviations from the Manson story work well (and I think it would be offensive, actually, to do a re-creation of those horrible murders, and yet change the names. My reaction then would be: “Think up your own story!”) I’m not sure about Suzanne’s pushing Evie out of the car on that horrible night. Anyone who’s read it, I welcome discussing it. Because I’m torn. Maybe it’s just because I know too much about Susan Atkins. That’s probably it, and that’s probably unfair and I should be dealing with fictional Suzanne as opposed to the real-life woman who so clearly inspired her (so many of the details are identical). So I’m just not sure about that aspect of it, and almost feel like Cline cringed away from not only the implications of her own story, but its dark and intriguing possibilities. How far would Evie go in denying the awful-ness in order to stay part of the group? How does the mind-adjustment process work, what happens when critical thinking skills are turned off for good? Susan Atkins, who became a born-again Christian in prison (typical), was the most frightening of all of the girls (at the time, and now). When Sharon Tate begged for the life of her baby, Susan said, “Bitch, I don’t care anything about you” before stabbing Sharon in the stomach. At the trial, when shown a picture of Steven Parent, shot dead in the driveway, who “wasn’t supposed to be there,” and asked whether or not she recognized him, Susan said, “Yes. That is the thing I saw in the car.” Thing. Susan Atkins was a monster and I do not care – one bit – that she had an unhappy childhood. Plenty of people have unhappy childhoods and they don’t become what Susan became. There was something in Susan Atkins (or something lacking in Susan Atkins) that made her embrace murder with an enthusiasm and a passion that must have far surpassed Manson’s wildest dreams for the kind of power he wanted to wield. Emma Cline (to my eye, coming at it as I do with an insane amount of knowledge about all those girls) nails what it was about Susan Atkins that was 1. so appealing at the outset – so pretty, the baby-voice, the floating disconnected quality that seemed deep to those who knew her and 2. so incomprehensibly evil later. And calculatedly evil. At one point, Evie observes that there were times when Suzanne’s eyes became a “brick wall.” One of the really insightful aspects of the book is the difference between pot/LSD and speed/amphetamines. There’s a palpable shift at the ranch, once people start popping amphetamines, paranoia, edginess, hardness, and Cline nails those essential differences, so important to understanding the sheer delirium of the late 1960s.
Russell (i.e. Manson) is a predator, but also a charismatic guy who knows how to talk to these lost girls in a way that makes them feel special. Evie notes that he keeps saying her name in their first conversation (a brainwashing technique). He controls the group through sex and power, and all of them bend their body language towards him whenever he is present. Cline is very good on brainwashing, and how the ranch became the whole world … making the outside world seem not only incomprehensible but silly and dispensable. Within a couple of weeks, Evie is stealing for the group and breaking into a neighbor’s home to look for cash.
Except for one moment of violence, when Russell spontaneously slaps Helen across the face, Cline does not show his increasing paranoia and anger at the failed record deal (although she hears about it), nor is there evidence of Manson’s apocalyptic viewpoint, the stockpiling of guns and knives, the dream to blow up the world and hide out in the desert, the “Helter Skelter” of it all. Similar to Jim Jones, who isolated his followers in Guyana, and then bombarded them with end-of-the-world-and-end-of-us propaganda, in his lectures and “sermons” and over the loudspeakers. Without contact with the outside world, his followers relied only on him for information. Manson operated the same way, and increased the group’s fear that something Big was coming, and they were at the center of it, and they needed to do something Big to counter-act it (or start the confrontation in the first place.)
Evie is mostly a “guest” at the ranch, and so its maneuverings often happen behind the scenes. I am not sure that this works entirely. Because to me the really interesting question is, and it’s the eternal question: If Evie had seen more of the backstage story, more of Russell’s violent nature, the mania, the planning for a violent confrontation … would she have still stayed? When would the red flag have come for her? Would it ever come? In real-life, it came to some of the girls involved. There was, after all, a line they would not, could not, cross. After all of the penetrations of and obliterations of boundaries, there were some people there who finally said, “Nope. No can do, Charlie.” Many walked away and never came back. For Linda Kasabian, who became the witness for the prosecution, the moment came the night of the murders when she refused to participate. “I’m not a murderer,” she said. And – and this is very important – Manson did not punish her for it. So, Ms. Leslie Van Houten, your excuses don’t really ring true. You say everyone was in thrall to Charlie, you say Charlie manipulated everyone? You say you would have been punished if you didn’t obey Charlie? Then how do you explain Linda? Linda wasn’t punished. She refused to kill, and Manson shrugged it off. Didn’t even care. In her interview with Diane Sawyer, Leslie van Houten insisted that Sawyer couldn’t know what she would have done in the same situation, because Sawyer wasn’t there, she didn’t know Manson’s power. Leslie’s point was: Sawyer might have participated too because you just can’t know what you would have done in that same situation. Sawyer said, “I do know. I would not have killed anyone.” “But how can you know that?” “Leslie, I know.” And etc. Leslie van Houten is still avoiding personal responsibility. When you think of the example of Linda Kasabian, it is clear that Leslie/Patricia/Susan WANTED to kill someone, to prove their love for Charlie, to show just how much they didn’t give a shit about our world, to kill off their former selves forever, whatever. Linda Kasabian – to this day – lives in fear of holdout Manson-lovers and groupies coming for her to punish her for her “betrayal”. She is still in hiding. In her 2009 televised interview with Larry King (her first interview ever [Correction: Her first interview was in 1988 with Current Affair), she didn’t show her face.
To really get the level of what these women were capable of and their denial of personal responsibility (well, Leslie van Houten parrots all the right words, but I don’t buy it one bit): At one of Patricia Krenwinkle’s recent parole hearings, she was asked, “Who was most hurt by your actions?” Krenwinkle responded, “Myself.” I’m sure she thought that was a lovely and self-aware and Oprah-ish answer. But the parole board heard in that one word that still – after ALL THIS TIME – Patricia Krenwinkle, now an elderly woman, does not get it. She still does not understand what she has done. WRONG ANSWER, Krenwinkle, wrong answer. The person most hurt by your actions, you sociopath-liar, was Abigail Folger, whom you stabbed so many times that the cops who came across the body in the yard the next morning thought she was wearing a red nightgown. Thankfully, after that comment, her file was inked with yet another stamp: PAROLE DENIED.
There were so many who stayed, no matter WHAT Manson did. And some are devoted to him to this day. Squeaky Fromme. I wouldn’t trust Sandra Good as far as I can throw her. So what was that about? Cline’s book does not address that. Nor should it have to, I suppose, because the main appeal for Evie is “the girls,” as the title says. Particularly Suzanne. Suzanne is the main draw. When the other girls at the ranch hover at Russell’s feet, waiting for a touch, a glance, the grand honor of giving him a blowjob, whatever … Evie hovers at Suzanne’s feet. Breathless. Waiting. For approval, attention, inclusion.
And THAT element is what makes the book so unforgettable. How girls look at other girls. What girls will do to get the approval of other girls. How girls relate to one another when a man is present. What jealousy means between girls. What love means between girls. Cline’s conclusions are extremely disturbing.
It’s a book deserving of the hype. I read it in two days.
//Since I am the type of person (is there such a type) who created a Google alert for “Leslie van Houten” (so that I can have up-to-date information on her various parole hearings)//
Hahahah!! Well, if there’s such a type, then I am one, too. Sheila O’Malley, you’re my kind of people.
I mean, I just need to know her status, at all times. Because she should never be let out!
Unfortunately, she was “recommended” for parole this last time – it hasn’t been approved yet – but it’s not a good sign.
(Pressed “Post” too soon!)
I love your review. Not something that I would have picked up before reading your take on it. “How girls look at girls” through the lens of the Manson family? Now I’m fascinated. Queued up on the Kindle!
Deborah – please let me know what you think once you read it. I’d love to discuss further!
and outside of the whole Manson thing – which is inherently interesting to me – I think her writing is quite beautiful – and not only that – but she’s addressing concepts and huge philosophical questions – like, she cares about the big picture. And she can write about it. She’s a young woman but she’s not a navel-gazer. She’s really interested in how people connect, and what happens when they do.
And what it’s like when people have a void in them – a void of need or longing … and how that can be filled with darkness just as easily as it can be filled with light.
If she writes this way at, what, 27 … imagine what she’ll be like in her 40s or 50s.
To me, the be-all end-all of “what girls are like to each other” is Margaret Atwood’s “Cat’s Eye” – and there is a cult-like atmosphere in really close friendships between girls, especially teenagers. (Or, there can be. I myself didn’t experience it – my tribe of friends were awesome and we’re still friends today. We didn’t put each other through the wringer, or compete with each other, or harbor ill-will towards each other. But I saw it in other groups in high school and I’ve seen it continue on into adulthood.)
Cline is young to have the insight she has – or, at least, to be able to WRITE about it so well.
That’s what call A rocket Book. I loved this book — one of my favourites of the year. The book is written in two halves and in some ways it feels a little like reading two different novels. The true gem of this stellar novel is the gorgeous and compulsive writing, asking the reader to both grip the book edges while flying through certain sections, while at the same time needing to reread passages to experience the beautiful prose again and again. I couldn’t put this one down, and easily could have devoured it in a sitting or two.
The true gem of this stellar novel is the gorgeous and compulsive writing, asking the reader to both grip the book edges while flying through certain sections, while at the same time needing to reread passages to experience the beautiful prose again and again. I couldn’t put this one down, and easily could have devoured it in a sitting or two. Having just recently finished it, I’m already yearning to pick it up to read again. I feel like I’ve been hearing about this book nonstop since last year, and in this case, it is for good reason.
Sheila
A friend of mine a couple of days ago said, “I’m reading this book I CANNOT put down, it’s about Manson and those girls and….. The way she was talking about it I knew I had to get it.
With this great review, Chilling. I really want to get it! I’ve always been fascinated too.
Leslie van Houten. I know John Waters is a friend and a campaigner to free her.
Sorry though, Bitch, you ain’t never getting out. I don’t care if she’s been Mother Teresa all these years, good, keep doing that, but you ain’t never getting out.
Cookie Mueller wrote a great short story about how she almost met Manson. She met some of the girls and it’s about how weird they were. She was even on that bus waiting for him but he was late and she missed him. Great writing.
Did you see Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene Directed by Sean Durkin? John Hawkes is terrific as a Manson type cult leader. And the movie deals with this girl getting out of a cult, showing how they draw you in. But there is mystery in it and weird surprises.
Yeah, I’m obsessed with this topic too!
I loved Martha, Marcy, May and Marlene! John Hawkes is so good.
// Sorry though, Bitch, you ain’t never getting out. //
Seriously. Fine, keep helping your fellow prisoners get their GEDs. You can do that from behind bars. Fuck you otherwise.
I’m very fascinated by what drew those girls to Manson, in particular. It’s kind of a no-brainer – they were all lost and drifting, it was a crazy time, they were good white middle-class girls who wanted to torch their upbringings. Enter Manson.
But at some point – there is a CHOICE. At some point – once the murders started up – people had to make choices. When Squeaky Fromme attempted to assassinate President Ford – she said later that as he approached, she looked at him and he “looked like cardboard.” There was something in SOME of these girls – not all, but some – who were so cut off from empathy/moral compass/humanity – that they could look at other human beings and feel nothing. Susan Atkins said it herself: Sharon Tate begged for the life of her baby. “I felt nothing for her.” YEARS later Susan Atkins was still insisting that she did not kill anyone. Tex did all of it.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the book, Regina – it’s a quick read. I would bet someone has already scooped up the movie rights.
Sheila I was actually cast as the lead in Durkin’s graduate thesis film, not many years before this. Auditioning he asked me who were some of my favorite directors I mentioned Polanski and especially Repulsion. His eyes widened. There was a scene, it turned out, a direct homage to Repulsion where I am going down a hallway. I played a woman cracking up. But the film was very much an original piece. I KNEW during it this young kid was going places. He let me try things but he was very much the director and knew what he wanted. It was intense but fun. I could see Durkin out of the corner of my eye during filming biting his nails, pacing, so into it! The film turned out great too, very well done, usually with student things I want to kill myself finally seeing it! Very sweet, humble guy too. I wasn’t surprised when I saw Martha, Marcy, May and Marlene.
Yeah, Tex might of done a lot of the heavy lifting, (his name just terrifies me) but those girls did that. I knew lots of girls like that too, my time about a decade after, nothing came close to anything like that happening, at all. I can feel a sort of pity, the girls I knew didn’t have a figure like Manson and the time wasn’t ripe like it was in 1969. But something was missing in the Manson girls, a heart, feelings. The subject continues to fascinate. I’ll get back to you on the book!
Wow!! Thanks for the insight on Durkin!
Tex’s name horrifies me too. Now apparently he’s a born-again Christian. Whatever. His eyes show the Heart of Darkness.
I agree in re: the Manson girls missing something. This is something they still don’t want to admit. Leslie van Houten in her interview with Diane Sawyer said something like, “But you don’t know, Diane … unless you were there, you don’t know what you would have done.” That’s where Leslie is wrong.
It’s chilling – because she still doesn’t get it.
Sheila Yes. Some girls I knew way back, girls who were not cared for and loved by a good family acted out, I mean I acted out too but they did it more so in a more spectacular way. Dressing a certain way, filthy, wearing rags, having a lot of sex with disgusting people, a lot of drugs, drinking, prostitution. Letting themselves be hurt. Getting into fights. But mostly they did hurt themselves the most. Cutting themselves was big. I didn’t understand that at all till actually Angelina Jolie was very candid about it and how it made her feel. Once I rescued a kitten off the streets that was being chased by a gang of little kids, boys and girls only around 10 years old. I got the kitten away from them and a little girl when I was cradling him hit him on the head, hard. I was so shocked! “Why did you do that?!” I only saw confusion on her face and a need to hurt. A 10 year old girl hurting a kitten?! It never left me, and I wonder what became of that girl. (and I had that kitten then for 17 years)
‘Unless you were there you wouldn’t know what you would have done.’
No No NO. The girls I knew would never hurt let alone kill someone like that or a defenseless animal, quite opposite. Most of them actually straightened out. But that little girl? I wonder do about her.
Wow. That makes me think of the well-known fact that serial killers often tested out their cruelty in childhood on animals. Hard to comprehend.
I suppose much of this comes from neglect or abuse (although the Manson girls came from – apparently – good homes. With the normal struggles of being a teenager, and some very sad events – Susan Atkin’s mother died when she was young – but nothing outrageous.) I suppose the TIME had much to do with it – as well as the use of hallucinogenics which separate you from reality. I’ve never done them, but that’s what I’ve heard – I mean, if you’re taking a “trip” every day – and not just as a sometime thing – then it would be very easy to totally detach from your “self”.
No excuse for murder, though, STILL. Many of the girls with Manson – who did as much LSD as anyone else – never killed anyone. Linda Kasabian was in the car the night of one of the murders, and refused to participate.
So, you know, it’s a puzzlement – and endlessly interesting and disturbing.
Sheila Oh yes, I forgot that they came from well off, good families! This made me think on your writing about Cathy from East of Eden. And flash on Nebraska from Springstein, ‘Well Sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world’.