'Early in The Girls, Chloe Higgins recounts her father’s reaction when he learns his two other children were killed in the car accident that has put him in hospital. “It is almost cartoonish, the way his mouth spreads open and his eyes push together, his forehead scrunching in on itself … ” Higgins writes of Maurice, who was driving the family car when it swerved into oncoming traffic and burst into flames, daughters Carlie and Lisa still trapped inside.' (Introduction)