Originally posted on couldreads:
On paper, Emma Cline is the kind of girl I want to punch. A?stylish waif with a successful?middle-part and piercing blue eyes. The owner of a near-monochromatic wardrobe that’s both simple and defiant in?its simplicity. The recipient of a $2 million advance, at the age of 25, for her first book (and two to come),?the end result of a bidding war between 12?major publishers. The author of a debut novel whose film rights were snapped up by Scott Rudin before the?manuscript even sold. Cline is living a charmed life, a romantic-comedy-set-in-Manhattan kind of life, an I-live-in-a-shed-for-the-novelty-of-it kind of life. I want to find her wherever she’s tapping away on her laptop at twee essays for vaunted?literary magazines and punch her right below that middle-part. There’s only one problem with this plan—several, if you count the unlikelihood?of my finding her shed or her even still living in the shed, or my managing to punch anyone in the face, arguably?unprovoked, without consequence. The problem is that The Girls, the novel loosely based on…