Stuart Coop

So it's backwards and forwards like that.

Dennis Wilson, who was the beach boy that Mum meets in Eat the Document, you know, yes, had Manson and the family staying at his home.

You know, they basically lived with him for a long period of time.

They stole his gold records to finance whatever they were up to.

Yes, I read The Girls.

And look, I think you're right.

I mean, Manson's easy.

You don't have to think that much.

I mean, you've got a ready-made array of pretty...

astonishingly well-drawn, well-documented characters to base your fiction around.

And sometimes, yes, it is like just a little bit obvious to go, okay, we're going to explore Manson's world and Manson's California.

But, you know, it was the dominant thing of that era.

Yeah, so I think Manson and the family epitomised everything that had gone wrong.

Therefore, it becomes, you know, kind of a go-to thing for fiction writers.

But, look, I did read Emma Klein's The Girls a little bit after all of the hype about it, but I found it terribly engaging, partly because she concentrated on the vulnerable women or the girls, right?

as she called it.

I mean, you know, she has an astonishing opening to that novel where, you know, her character just sees these three young girls, you know, playing around and gets caught into their world and eventually gets taken to meet Charlie and that.

So I thought she was distinctive in the way that she handled it and going at it through the

through the women who were under the spell of Manson and basically, you know, very vulnerable and prone to suggestion and manipulation by this figure.

Yes, I stumbled across a massive, I think, 600-page book.