Scan barcode
A review by brooke_review
The Girls Are Good by Ilaria Bernardini
4.0
When I was a child, the world of gymnastics looked so glamorous. I was a young teen when the USA’s Magnificent Seven won gold at the 1996 Olympics, and all of my friends and I were obsessed with the sport, attempting to recreate the gymnasts’ routines in our backyards and arguing over which girl was our favorite (everyone loved and wanted to be Dominique Moceanu.). To us, being a gymnast performing dazzling tricks on the world stage seemed like a dream come true, but reality was much different.
In recent years, gymnasts have found their voice and are speaking out against the abuses committed against them in the name of winning gold. From mental to physical to sexual abuse, gymnasts have proven that all that glitters is not gold. In fact, there’s something downright rotten in the sport. Ilaria Bernardini’s The Girls are Good continues to expose the dark underbelly of women’s gymnastics, following an Italian team over a week’s time at a competition in Romania that ends in murder.
Divided up by days of the week, The Girls are Good takes readers through each day of the competition, highlighting the rigorous regimes gymnasts go through to compete and showing that mental gymnastics play as big a part in their performance as does their physical feats. As the competition builds, so does the tension among the girls as they all vie to be the best. Combining true-to-life accounts of sacrifice, strife, and abuse with a sensational murder story, The Girls are Good strips the glamour from gymnastics and leaves us with much to think about.
It was an experience for me to read a gymnastics story that follows a group of girls not from the United States. Even in the face of abuse and competition, US gymnasts typically show a supportive, smiling face to the crowd, but the girls in Bernardini’s novel are downright nasty. I am not sure if this is how Bernardini wrote the girls, if it is a cultural difference, or if something got lost in translation, but The Girls are Good shows that the girls are, in fact, bad.
Following the POV of Martina, a quiet girl on the team who comes from poverty and who can never shine as bright as the team’s stars Carla and Nadia, The Girls are Good demonstrates how ugly girls can be to each other when there is something at stake. Martina is required to bunk up with Carla and Nadia, best friends who have an unsettling obsession with each other, and through her eyes, we see that Carla especially is rude, crude, and no prude. She bullies her teammates and friends, rages against the competition, and behaves in a hyper-sexualized manner, likely due to the abuse she and the rest of the girls on the team have suffered at the hands of their doctor.
This story is dark, dirty, and difficult to read, but it is also incredibly revealing and thought-provoking. Should we be submitting our youth to the treacheries of the sport at such a young, impressionable age? How can we trust those who claim to have young gymnasts’ best interests at heart? And what are the repercussions for winning gold? Is it really worth it? Read The Girls are Good if you wanted to be horrified by the dark side of gymnastics.
In recent years, gymnasts have found their voice and are speaking out against the abuses committed against them in the name of winning gold. From mental to physical to sexual abuse, gymnasts have proven that all that glitters is not gold. In fact, there’s something downright rotten in the sport. Ilaria Bernardini’s The Girls are Good continues to expose the dark underbelly of women’s gymnastics, following an Italian team over a week’s time at a competition in Romania that ends in murder.
Divided up by days of the week, The Girls are Good takes readers through each day of the competition, highlighting the rigorous regimes gymnasts go through to compete and showing that mental gymnastics play as big a part in their performance as does their physical feats. As the competition builds, so does the tension among the girls as they all vie to be the best. Combining true-to-life accounts of sacrifice, strife, and abuse with a sensational murder story, The Girls are Good strips the glamour from gymnastics and leaves us with much to think about.
It was an experience for me to read a gymnastics story that follows a group of girls not from the United States. Even in the face of abuse and competition, US gymnasts typically show a supportive, smiling face to the crowd, but the girls in Bernardini’s novel are downright nasty. I am not sure if this is how Bernardini wrote the girls, if it is a cultural difference, or if something got lost in translation, but The Girls are Good shows that the girls are, in fact, bad.
Following the POV of Martina, a quiet girl on the team who comes from poverty and who can never shine as bright as the team’s stars Carla and Nadia, The Girls are Good demonstrates how ugly girls can be to each other when there is something at stake. Martina is required to bunk up with Carla and Nadia, best friends who have an unsettling obsession with each other, and through her eyes, we see that Carla especially is rude, crude, and no prude. She bullies her teammates and friends, rages against the competition, and behaves in a hyper-sexualized manner, likely due to the abuse she and the rest of the girls on the team have suffered at the hands of their doctor.
This story is dark, dirty, and difficult to read, but it is also incredibly revealing and thought-provoking. Should we be submitting our youth to the treacheries of the sport at such a young, impressionable age? How can we trust those who claim to have young gymnasts’ best interests at heart? And what are the repercussions for winning gold? Is it really worth it? Read The Girls are Good if you wanted to be horrified by the dark side of gymnastics.