Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott | Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.5) “Women have to live so much of their life in the in-betweens.”
In case you didn't know: Megan Abbott is one of my all-time favourite authors. I adore her prose so much and the way she is able to portray the complexities of humanity and the relationships between women. It's fairly obvious why I'd been looking forward to Give Me Your Hand since it was announced. Abbott could write out the contents of a phone-book from 1975 and I'd be pretty much guaranteed to admire it. There is no other author out there like her and very few authors have made me feel to the degree that she has in prior releases.
Give Me Your Hand had a simple enough premise to it. As per usual, it followed the friendship between two young women. Armed with her brutal honesty and frank under-standing of being women, and the all-consuming friend-ships that can bloom in our youth, Abbott compels her audience into a chilling sort of captivation. While Give Me Your Hand is a solid release, and has its fair share of stellar moments, it is far from her best novel. There were moments where it seemed to pause and lack growth; perhaps this is due to its topic nature and inclusion of science (something I was never altogether great with in the past) and more of a personal preference.
You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott | Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.5)“She hadn't learned, no one had taught her ... that the things you want, you never get them. And if you do, they're not what you thought they'd be. But you'd still do anything to keep them. Because you'd wanted them for so long.”
I'm going to start with one thing first--Megan Abbott is one of my favourite writers. No, not one. She is probably, actually, #1. There's just something about Abbott's prose that takes my breath away and causes me to turn; highlight, think and repeat. From The Fever and The End of Everything all the way back to Dare Me, I find myself stunned at the amount Abbott makes you feel in one short novel.
While I enjoyed You Will Know Me a lot, I didn't like it as much as I had assumed I would. The better half of the book--the final 75%--kept me in place, a feeling of dread and something I couldn't quite understand. That's when you know that Megan Abbott has something up her sleeve. Her prose is one of those rarities in fiction that makes your skin crawl in fear and intimacy.
You know these characters like you know a poet--in glimpses, not completely.
The End of Everything by Megan Abbott | Rating: ★★★★★...like all that you are is the wanting, and the rest of you just burns away?
If there's only one thing to be said about an author like Megan Abbott, it should be this: she breathes life into her words and the characters only grow from there. She understand the complexities of being a young girl or woman--she just knows how the tone of life is for us. More than this, she is able to speak to parts of us that are often ignored in literature; teasing us with that ounce of fiction mixed in with what connects us to the characters. The End of Everything is just the same, a story of girlhood and the possible loss of innocence.
There's a dreamy quality to it that bridges the characters thoughts (both realistic and not) to our own way of processing things. As usual, the flow of it is vivid and velvety smooth, exactly what literature is meant to be. It is thought provoking and compelling, tying us to the pages of the bigger mysteries we see unraveling. I've always felt that Abbott understands things about what a reader finds captivating better than her peers and even in some of her weaker releases, this much is clear.
The Fever by Megan Abbott | Rating: ★★★★★“I have another friend who gets what I’m really like, and I get her. She scares me. Did you ever see yourself times ten in another person and want to cover your eyes?”
I'm not going to even hesitate when I tell you this: Megan Abbott is one of my favourite writers. You know when you read a novel and it just hits you suddenly that hours have passed but you've been utterly consumed by a story? That was me with The Fever. Immediately, it hit me that the story was heavy in that special way that haunts you for hours after you've concluded your binge. I felt it in the previous novel of hers I had read--Dare Me.
That was different, though. This felt all new to me and it simultaneously intrigued and gutted me. All in one sitting I just kept thinking: "Holy shit. This book." The Fever kept my mind spinning and reeling and captivated in a way that comes with mysterious and thrillers. I had the same feeling during Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. It's like you've become so invested in the characters that you feel this lump forming in your throat as the story progresses. Ultimately, that's the most striking thing about Abbott's prose and stories; your mind doesn't remove itself from the pages. The Fever is not unlike a fever itself, heavy and intimidating. You feel yourself but not like yourself.
Dare Me by Megan Abbott | Rating: ★★★★☆ That’s what people never understand: They see us hard little pretty things, brightly lacquered and sequin-studded, and they laugh, they mock, they arouse themselves. They miss everything.
Let's get down to business. You've seen the buzz. You've been urged to check this one out. If you frequently use sites such as Tumblr and glimpse into its massive book community, of graphic makers in particular, you’ve probably found yourself hearing the buzz behind Megan Abbott’s novel Dare Me and the oh-so-overused yet absolutely truthful quote:
“There’s something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls.”
There’s also a chance that this quote and the trope that springs from it has either turned you off of the novel or captured your attention, without even reading it. I must say, it caught me right away because of the honesty behind it.
It’s such a simple statement, but it is right… mostly. I had high hopes for how Megan Abbott could incorporate this theme into her writing through Dare Me, a story about high school cheerleaders and something of an introduction into adult lives. It has a premise that would certainly make a solid coming of age adaptation and continue to generate buzz.
