The American novelist Emma Cline is a golden girl. She’s known for her gorgeous telegraphic style, and for the $2 million advance and three-book contract it brought her, back when she was a 27-year-old graduate of Columbia University’s MFA programme. Her tousled strawberry-blonde hair and ghostly blue eyes were, in the eyes of the publishing industry, a walking advertisement for the California noir promised by her 2016 debut, The Girls, which describes an awkward young girl mesmerised into joining Charles Manson’s murderous “Family”. Riding on positive reviews, or the expertly-culled selections of the many that called it dull and disappointing, not to mention the spectacle of that ungodly advance – who wouldn’t want to read the book that made a 27-year-old a millionaire? – The Girls was a colossal hit.
