The Girls

By: Chloe Higgins

Narrated by: Katherine Littrell

Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

WINNER OF THE VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD 2020
SHORTLISTED FOR THE VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARD FOR NON-FICTION 2020
SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY AWARD 2020

In 2005, Chloe Higgins was seventeen years old. She and her mother, Rhonda, stayed home so that she could revise for her exams while her two younger sisters Carlie and Lisa went skiing with their father. On the way back from their trip, their car veered off the highway, flipped on its side and burst into flames. Both her sisters were killed. Their father walked away from the accident with only minor injuries.

This book is about what happened next.

In a memoir of breathtaking power, Chloe Higgins describes the heartbreaking aftermath of that one terrible day. It is a story of grieving, and learning to leave grief behind, for anyone who has ever loved, and lost.

©2019 Chloe Higgins (P)2019 Macmillan Australia Audio

Critic reviews

"Higgins spares nothing in her telling of the slow violence of grief, in the puzzlement of transformation and the skewing of sound mind from one instant of catastrophe...An exacting act of detonation, The Girls bares a talented writer's foundations at the same time as it raises the spirit of survival." (Kate Holden, author of In My Skin)

"A tender and heartfelt book, exploring the intricacies and long aftermath of trauma and grief with great frankness and directness. Its honest and exacting exploration of what happens to the body and the self in grief is deeply moving, without being excoriating, and the writing is both lyrical and tough - Higgins has a distinctive and accomplished voice, and this book is a beautiful achievement." (Fiona Wright)

"An astounding new voice whose work mines the slippery regions between grief, sex, love, parents and children. This book is a rare find." (Felicity Castagna)

Felt title was inappropriate

First of all I totally accept that this is the author's story of a personal journey and taken that way, by all means, read it.

But as a potential for dealing with one's own grief over the loss of a loved one, or a story of grieving for two lost siblings, it just does not travel and you will find no help here.

In many ways, if it is a personal purge of whatever description, it was better either left unpublished (we can all keep journals to let out our inner demons, or have unrecorded conversations with intimates), but to say it offers anything to others in their grieving process is grossly misleading.

"The Girls" for whom the book is titled are virtually non-existent here and although the author claims to have written a family story - it just is NOT. It also felt cringe- making how she represented the bereaved parents - Dad can do no wrong, and Mum is constantly belittled.

A wasted opportunity.

Creative Writing Student’s Dear Diary Excerpts...

Is how this book came across to me.

In all the reviews of it I read, words like raw, heartbreaking and brave were thrown about with such abandon, I kept wanting to like it, and for the point of it to reveal itself. But all I was left with was a sense of an artless montage of diary entries and a voyeuristic feeling.