THE GIRLS, BY EMMA CLINE
The book alternates between the
present day and 1969, when Evie Boyd was 14 years old. She lives in Petaluma, California, and her
parents are divorcing. Her father is
living with a woman from his office. Her mother is dating men, all of whom Evie
dislikes. She feels her mother is
desperate to find someone to date. Evie
has been best friends with Connie, and they spend a lot of time at each other’s
house. The author does a great job
describing how young teenagers act and how they need each other. The girls spend a great deal of time planning
makeup, trying new beauty techniques, talking about boys and girls at their
school, etc. Evie has a crush on
Connie’s older brother and secretly devastated when he elopes with his
girlfriend. The author captures the
closeness girls feel towards each other and the change in the friendship when
alliances shift. Evie notices a group of
people at a park, and focuses on the dark haired woman who seems the prettiest. The second time she sees them, she goes
with them to the ranch. They are living
in a dilapidated house and have barely enough to eat, and wear old, discarded
clothes. They all worship the 30
something leader, Russell, who is a failed musician. When
the book begins, we know that Evie was involved with the cult, and that people
were murdered. We don’t know until the
end what happened. But the emphasis of
the book is not so much on the murder and the cult. It’s more about how subserviant girls and
women are to men, and how they feel they need approval from each other and men
to fulfill themselves, longing for acceptance, trying to fulfill oneself by
other’s approval. The writer did a good job capturing the era of
the late 60’s in California, and the attraction of cults.
THE LILAC GIRLS BY MARTHA HALL KELLY
This well written novel follows three women through the course of
World War II and beyond. Caroline, a wealthy New Yorker, volunteers at the
French consulate in New York, assisting refugees and raising funds. Kasia, a young woman living in Poland during
the Nazi invasion, works for the resistance until she is captured and sent with
her mother to Ravensbruck, the women’s concentration camp. There, she
encounters Herta, a female German doctor hired to help execute inmates and
perform experiments. Kasia is operated
on, becoming one of the “Rabbits,”
inmates deformed from their surgeries. After the war, the three women connect when
Caroline travels to France to assist in locating missing people, and learns about the Rabbits, including
Kasia. When the novel begins, we see Kasia as a young teenager who wants
to do something to help the war.
Caroline is into society life, and then changes. Herta is a doctor who takes a job. This is an amazing book that takes real
characters (Caroline Ferridey, Herta Oberheuser) and the Polish girls who were
operated on in experiments. The author
based her story on diaries, letters, museums, etc.)
