The Quarry Girls: A Thriller

Content Warning: This novel and guide discuss rape, child abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional), domestic violence, murder, kidnapping, torture, and death by suicide.

The Quarry Girls examines the systemic contributors to misogynistic violence and questions whether men who commit acts like murder and rape are born or made. Through characters like Ed, Ant, Ricky, and Gary, the narrative explores the various contributing factors that drive men to violence and the ways social expectations breed such violence as children become adults. Both the men and women of Pantown participate in violent patterns because of how they’ve been raised, and The Quarry Girls reveals how cultural messages that treat women as subservient to men breed violence for generations.

Both Heather and Gloria note how men in groups influence each other to commit acts of violence. Gloria tells Heather that “men in packs can do terrible things, things they wouldn’t have the hate to do alone” (300), highlighting the way these actions dehumanize their perpetrators by comparing them to animals. Ant, for example, participates in Brenda and Maureen’s deaths because of Ed’s influence. White responsible for his own actions, Heather notes that Ricky and Ant are “Pantown boys, preying on their own, led by Ed Godo” (278), showing how murder is an extreme version of the sexist violence that already defines Pantown.