Always a treat to read an Emma Cline book. I love The Girls very much. Cline writes so well, so frighteningly well, about white American girlhood, about the hunger for attention ingrained in girls that gives way in her stories to a moral unmooring, a need that outstrips all else. Always it’s impossible to dismiss the characters as perpetrators and always it’s impossible to accept them as victims. There is a real troubling murk that Cline can conjour better than anyone else.

This book was less riveting to me. It hung too much on the party at the end of the week she just had to get to. It hung way too much. The episodes in which the protag conned various upper crust dupes into doing her bidding started to feel predictable and repetitious. Lots of reviews and Tik Tok videos made a lot of the ending but it felt like too little too late to me. Of course all of these choices could be read as thematically pointed but that feels like a cop out to me. But that mood, that sense of girlhood forked out and snapped on its own supply—nobody does it like Cline. ( )

Great writing: sharp, deft sentences.

This is a book about users and the used. Alex, a young call girl is both. Her mental illness and sociopathy are made clear throughout the book. Like a spy she makes her living by thinking on her feet and turning every new situation into an opportunity. Her job is to please and she does so very well until she gets sick of it. She is shown in contrast with other young men and women who continue to devote themselves to pleasing, organizing, anticipating, and caring for their rich masters who can live their lives of excess when all the day-to-day business of living is made smooth and peaceful. Why does Alex sabotage herself at every turn? Why is she so blind to reality? Or is the reader left wondering why all the other servants are so blind to reality that they also don't wreak havoc on their overlords? I didn't fall in love with Alex. I didn't fall in love with anyone in this book, but I couldn't stop reading it. ( )

One of the books I probably wouldn't have gotten around to reading if it weren't for the Millions Tournament of Books. Reminded me of 'Luster' by Raven Leilani and 'Mouth to Mouth' by Antoine Wilson if you combine both those books. (But in my mind, 'Luster' is on a very high pedestal.) OH and both of those just happened to have been Tournament books. Also, not sure if I'm grasping at a connection here to 'The Swimmer' by John Cheever. There really should have been some pool art on this cover. So. many. pools. This poor girl Alex though -- the book is really just a wreck waiting to happen that you just can't look away from. But to me, that can't be the only purpose for a book to propel you to read it. It honestly makes you wonder how many people are actually houseless and just don't want to admit to reality. I guess there is survival in being hopeful and positive. The book was just okay for me. Not enough Tournament Magic enough for me in this one.
*Book #142/340 I have read of the shortlisted Morning News Tournament of Books ( )

Alex is a young woman who is summering in Long Island, but she is not a part of the usual social set. It is not clear if she is an escort or a prostitute, but when her boyfriend Simon casts her out of his house before his adult daughter comes to visit, she decides not to head back to the city where a man (Dom) is very angry at her for stealing his money and drugs. Instead, she spends her time slipping into groups of people where everyone else assumes she is a guest of someone else. She chats, eats their food, takes their drugs, drinks their alcohol and exists until she is found out and she moves on. Her goal is to crash Simon's big Labor Day party where she is certain Simon will be pleased to see her and will help her repay Dom. The book ends just as Simon spots her entering his party. ( )