We get to know Evie as a young girl growing up in the 70s. The granddaughter of a TV star. Sharpened by cynicism and suffering from a perceived lack of love and attention, she is needy for someone charismatic to endorse her existence.
As a middle aged woman Evie observes the unhealthy relationship of a girl and her boyfriend, the son of a friend who’s house she is staying in at the time. It is the catalyst that makes Evie reflect on her own youth, and how as a young teenager, she fell for a dark, edgy girl and became sucked into a cult.
Inspired by Charles Manson: the murders, and the girls that followed him. Not a rehash of a gory tale, but a story that is essentially about the wisdom of hindsight and how age and experience cannot define someone else's future.
Definitely one to be added to the list of great confessionals, amongst such titles as — Lolita, The Collector, The Reader, and Notes on a Scandal — where we meet, not an evil stranger, but an earlier self.