3.5 Stars
Middle-aged
Evie Boyd looks back to the summer of 1969 when as a 14-year-old teenager she
became involved in a Manson-like cult. Drawn
to a free-spirited rebellious woman named Suzanne, Evie is introduced to the
commune of which Suzanne is a member. Evie
gradually becomes involved in the cult’s lifestyle of free love, drugs, and
crime.
The
characterization of the teenaged Evie is a strong element in the book. Evie’s parents are virtually absent from her
life; nothing seems to be happening in her life; she feels alienated from her
peers; and her crushes on boys are unreciprocated. As a result, she is bored and drifting
through life and is desperate for attention and love. The older Suzanne sees her neediness and gives
her the attention she desires. Evie thrives
on being noticed and focuses on trying to please Suzanne and the cult leader, Russell
Hadrick, so their love and attention will not be withdrawn. Of course, Evie is being manipulated: she is forced into sexual service and encouraged
to steal to supply food and money for the group.
It becomes
clear how certain people can be drawn into belonging to a cult. Both Russell and Suzanne are adept at
recognizing young women who lack confidence and self-esteem. These insecure, lonely women are easily
malleable. Some attention makes them
feel, like Evie, that they are “the center of a singular drama.” As an adult, Evie can recognize the tactics
Russell used on her during her first evening at the commune: “Russell had put me through a series of
ritual tests. . . . Attracting the thin, harried girls with partial college
degrees and neglectful parents, girls with hellish bosses and dreams of nose
jobs. His bread and butter. . . .
Already he’d become an expert in female sadness – a particular slump in the
shoulders, a nervous rash. A subservient
lilt at the end of sentences, eyelashes gone soggy from crying. Russell did the same thing to me that he did
to those girls. Little tests, first. A touch on my back, a pulse of my hand. Little ways of breaking down boundaries”
(125).
The novel
examines the world of young women and does not present a pleasant picture. Young girls are objectified and their
self-esteem is directly connected to how they meet society’s ideals of feminine
beauty and deportment. Young girls are
often targets of sexual exploitation; Evie lists several instances of how men
saw her need and used it against her: “a
stranger at a fair who palmed my crotch through my shorts. A man on the sidewalk who lunged at me, then
laughed when I flinched. The night an
older man took me to a fancy restaurant . . . [and] later placed my hand on his
dick while he drove me home. None of
this was rare. Things like this happened
hundreds of times. Maybe more” (349 –
350). I’d bet there are few women who
can’t list such encounters from their personal experience.
The message
is that times have changed but what is expected of women has not. Women are expected to accept the dehumanizing
demands of men. Evie sees her behaviour
paralleled in the behaviour of a young woman named Sasha whose boyfriend Julian
coerces her into exposing her breasts to a friend of his. Then Sasha “barely said goodbye. Burrowing into Julian’s side, her face set
like a preventative against my pity. She
had already absented herself, I knew, gone to that other place in her mind
where Julian was sweet and kind and life was fun, or if it wasn’t fun, it was interesting, and wasn’t that valuable,
didn’t that mean something” (338)? This is
so similar to Evie’s 14-year-old self “trying so hard to slur the rough,
disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love” (47).
If you’ve
ever wondered how women could have been attracted to Charles Manson and why
they would have killed for him, you might want to read this book. You may find yourself wanting to shake Evie
out of her naivety but you may also come to an understanding of the appeal of
cults for certain people whose vulnerability makes them targets for the
unscrupulous.
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