27 must-read literary fiction books like The Girls by Emma Cline

If you liked the literary fiction plot in The Girls by Emma Cline , here is a list of 27 books like this:

Similar categories in Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary

"The letter is still in my makeup box but I am careful not to read it unless I am drunk"

-Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

"Carter and Helene still ask questions. I used to ask questions, and I got the answer: nothing. The answer is “nothing."

-Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

"Carter and Helene still believe in cause-effect. Carter and Helene also believe that people are either sane or insane."

-Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

"She could remember it all but none of it seemed to come to anything. She had a sense the dream had ended and she had slept on."

-Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

Similar categories in Elif Batuman's The Idiot book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• historical fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"For a while now, I have been conscious of a tension in my relationship with you,"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

"Lighting a match felt exciting and a little bit dangerous, and when the flame came into contact with the paper, it made a sound like the needle coming down on a record player—like the music was about…"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

"For the first time in my life, I couldn't think of anything I particularly wanted to study or to do. I still had the old idea of being a writer, but that was being, not doing. It didn't say what you …"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

"Suddenly it occurred to me that maybe the point of writing wasn't just to record something past but also to prolong the present, like in One Thousand and One Nights, to stretch out the time until the…"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

Similar categories in Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• adult
• fiction
• contemporary

"She was the still point in the turning world."

-Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

"During a warm winter rain ... the basins of her collarbones collected water."

-Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

"In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life."

-Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

"Aloft, he looked frail, diseased, and temperamental, as we expected a European to look."

-Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

Similar categories in Eve Babitz's Sex and Rage book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary

Similar categories in Stephanie Danler's Sweetbitter book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• audiobook
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary

Similar categories in Emma Cline's The Girls book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• historical
• fiction
• historical fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

Similar categories in Ottessa Moshfegh's Eileen book and Emma Cline's The Girls

Similar categories in Ros Schwartz's I Who Have Never Known Men book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• adult
• fiction

"Survival is never more than putting off the moment of death."

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"I thought it was unfair, and then I understood that, alone and terrified, anger was my only weapon against the horror"

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"Look at them. They’re pretending, they behave as though they still have some control over their lives and make momentous decisions about which vegetable to cook first."

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"Only now, I tell myself that what I'd felt for her, the trust that slowly built up, the constant preference for her company and the joy each time I was reunited with her after an expedition were prob…"

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

Similar categories in Patti Smith's Just Kids book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• audiobook

"There's always new stuff, that's for sure."

-Patti Smith, Just Kids

"Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?"

-Patti Smith, Just Kids

"I knew he didn't love me, but I adored him anyway."

-Patti Smith, Just Kids

"Christ was a man worthy to rebel against, for he was rebellion itself."

-Patti Smith, Just Kids

Similar categories in Mona Awad's Rouge book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"If I had beauty, I decided then, I would never throw it away. I would never give it up."

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"I mean, we all have our dark days. Very dark days, sometimes. When our demons come out to play. No one lives entirely in the light, right?"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"That I can’t protect you from my terrible places that I still go, can’t help but go because no one protected me, no one saved me, no one ever held out their hand and walked me away. But I’m trying to…"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

Similar categories in Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under the Sea book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"El océano profundo es una casa embrujada: un lugar donde se mueven en la oscuridad cosas que no deberían existir."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

"She refused almost every aspect of my help, the way women will when they've been bred to accept little more than the baset civility."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

"I don't know why I expected you to read my mind,' I say, when I call back to leave her a message, 'I was just doing what I always do, assuming the world revolves around me."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

"The space around us is a claw half grasped, holding tight without quite crushing, and I wish, in the idle way I always wish these days, that I felt more confident in my ability to breathe."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

Similar categories in Maud Ventura's My Husband book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"When it comes to love, I’ve learned nothing: I love too intensely and I’m consumed by my own love (analysis, jealousy, doubt)—so much that when I’m in love, I always end up slightly extinguished and …"

-Maud Ventura, My Husband

Similar categories in Jessica Knoll's Bright Young Women book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• historical
• fiction
• historical fiction
• adult
• audiobook

"The truth is something people will go to great lengths to keep for themselves. It shouldn't feel like a gift when you get it, but it is."

-Jessica Knoll, Bright Young Women

"Time does not heal all wounds. Grief is just like a sink full of dirty dishes or a pile of soiled laundry. Grief is a chore you have to do, and it's a messy one, at that."

-Jessica Knoll, Bright Young Women

"There were men who cracked their knuckles while divulging to me what they would do to the defendant if they got the chance, thinking this was somehow reassuring for me to hear. But all it did was mak…"

-Jessica Knoll, Bright Young Women

"Her lips are moving silently around words I recognize. 'I carry you like my own personal Time Machine, as I put on my lipstick, smile, and head out to the party.' It's a line by one of her favourite …"

-Jessica Knoll, Bright Young Women

Similar categories in Mona Awad's Bunny book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"The pink pony inside me weeps softly."

-Mona Awad, Bunny

"Oh, Bunny, I love you. I love you, Bunny."

-Mona Awad, Bunny

"We think of it as art meets life, Bunny. We’re putting art into the world."

-Mona Awad, Bunny

"Because life is shorter than we are, she says, so why beat around the bush?"

-Mona Awad, Bunny

Similar categories in Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• historical
• fiction
• historical fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"But such was death - it had nothing to say."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

"Blood was the wine of the spirit, was it not?"

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

"What scared her were other people and their immovable selfishness"

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

"But Jude's piety was a kind of violent urge and not the love and peace it ought to be"

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

Similar categories in Eliza Clark's Penance book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Do you know what happened to her already? Did you catch it in the papers? Are you local? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did some website the trawls local news for the worst details…"

-Eliza Clark, Penance

Similar categories in R.F. Kuang's Yellowface book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"The truth is fluid, there is always another way to spin the story."

-R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

"They tell authors never to look at Goodreads, but nobody follows that advice—none of us can resist the urge to know how our work is being received."

-R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

"Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hu…"

-R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

Similar categories in Caroline O'Donoghue's The Rachel Incident book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"I was twenty and I needed two things: to be in love and to be taken seriously."

-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

"He was a doctor and I was supposed to take what he said seriously; but he was a dentist and my dad so I didn’t."

-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

"It's not that we weren't capable of warmth as a family. But we were regularly seduced by the concept of being wronged."

-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

"I thought of my parents as heads on Easter Island, and it took moving two miles away to realise they had been people all along."

-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

Similar categories in Sheena Patel's I'm a Fan book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"It is toxic. I am familiar"

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"Happiness or safety. Or isn't that the same thing?"

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"I never came with him. I never felt safe enough to."

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"The world is made for couples. Even the unhappy ones."

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

Similar categories in Melissa Broder's Death Valley book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"My body is the real problem here. If I could be bodiless - or at least, senseless - I’d be better off."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"This is the problem with human relationships: you come to a person with one feeling and they’re having another."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"I am going to die out here. I might. I could. Die. All this time I should have been practising for dying. What was I doing instead? Reading reviews for sweatpants."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"Stop placing so much value on the known, I tell myself. Fake like this is the hero’s journey. It’s good to get lost. Good for the soul. But how lost is the good amount of lost? If I die here, is that…"

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

Similar categories in Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"What next? I couldn't imagine."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

"I wasn't an insomniac, but I was miserable."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

"Life was repetitive, resonated at a low hum."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

"I just wanted to sleep all the time. I had a plan."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Similar categories in Dizz Tate's Brutes book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"to be loved, was just to be watched"

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"We feel chased. It doesn't matter if it's only by our own shadows."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"and now I think that to humiliate a woman is the only way some men know how to love one."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"To be loved was just to be watched, or in my case, to imagine you are loved is to imagine you are watched all the time."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

Similar categories in Julia Fox's Down the Drain book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• audiobook
• contemporary

"I want to love him but I often find myself wishing he could just be an asshole all the time. This way I wouldn't have all these inner battles with myself. I learn to navigate my way through shattered…"

-Julia Fox, Down the Drain

Similar categories in Jen Beagin's Big Swiss book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"¿Habla más de un idioma?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"You bullied other bullies,"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"she’d always been less of a shit-talker and more of a shit-thinker"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"At least I know where the hell I am and what’s happening. Which way is north?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

Similar categories in Dolly Alderton's Good Material book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Thirty-five is the youth of middle age."

-Dolly Alderton, Good Material

"Remember, a broken heart is a jester's greatest prop."

-Dolly Alderton, Good Material

"You know how to be along without being lonely. Do you know how rare that is?"

-Dolly Alderton, Good Material

"Why is it that London always seems the most alive and full of possibility on the nights when you've got no plans?"

-Dolly Alderton, Good Material

Similar categories in Coco Mellors's Cleopatra and Frankenstein book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"And you’re in love?"

-Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

"People are like this too, you know,"

-Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

"When the darkest part of you meets the darkest part of me, it creates light."

-Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

"Cleo and Frank could not make each other happy, no matter how hard they’d tried."

-Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

Similar categories in Eliza Clark's Boy Parts book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Was it my idea to have him hurt me, or did he just let me think it was?"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

"My mam always used to tell me that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And Eddie from Tesco is a fly, but he's got a taste for vinegar. It's like vinegar is all he's ever had from peop…"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

"You want to think you're not like other women, but you are, you know. You're still... that's still how the rest of the world, how men are going to see you. Like, I know you hate labels, but you like.…"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

"Do you like it rough? I think so. I think I must. Men are rough, aren't they? Have I always had a taste for rough stuff, or did I acquire that? In the back of Lesley's car, on the floor of a friend's…"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

Similar categories in Melissa Broder's Milk Fed book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"This interplay between hope and reality was also a part of the mourning."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

"There are emanations of god we can’t even see. What’s important is that you feel it."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

"Life was a lot less bleak when you were staring straight down the barrel of a burrito."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

"I wanted a love contingent on nothing finite. I wanted a love without end. Everyone was always saying you had to give it to yourself. Self-love, self-love."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

Similar categories in Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"The open office floor plan is a form of strangulation."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"Maybe there must always be two of us—our real selves and the ones we create to survive in the world as it is."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"When you're young, every part of life seems big and monumental. Once older you can see it for what it is: smaller pieces of a larger game you have no choice but to play."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"If the brain is elastic and memory is faulty, maybe all of these stories are wrong. Maybe it happened a different way altogether. Maybe I was happy and I just forget that now."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

Similar categories in Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"When you die, leave not a trace. Sweep up any evidence of your existence."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

"How did people go on with their lives as though death weren't all around them?"

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

"Suspicion invites danger, doesn't it? Keep the imagination soft and happy, and only good things will come."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

"But people lied all the time. It was a part of what kept us whole as individuals. A little lying never hurt anybody. It kept the bounds of what one person was distinct from what another person was."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

Similar categories in Lisa Taddeo's Animal book and Emma Cline's The Girls

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Let me tell you something, he said, looking into my eyes like an asshole."

-Lisa Taddeo, Animal

"When someone suffocates you with what they believe is love, even as you feel your air supply being cut off, you at least feel embraced."

-Lisa Taddeo, Animal

"The men noticed I'd stopped playing. Men are never okay when you stop. I had the fear of angering a man. Of not being an amenable woman. I had the fear of being murdered."

-Lisa Taddeo, Animal

"He looked a little wounded, and I realized that true power came from not caring about anyone. That was the last time I would sleep with a man. I was through with the gender."

-Lisa Taddeo, Animal