Skip to main content

Megan Abbott's The Fever gives ME a fever....for more Megan Abbott



Lying on the floor, her mouth open, tongue lolling, Lise hadn't seemed like a girl at all.
It must have been a trick of the light, she told herself.
But looking down at Lise, lips stretched wide, Deenie thought, for one second, that she saw something hanging inside Lise's mouth, something black, like a bat flapping.

Megan Abbott's The Fever is NOT, in fact, a published X-Files episode. I hadn't read anything of hers before and had no idea what to expect, so when I read the above, I went "HEY this is clearly an alien/cryptozoology story." False. It is, however, a dark look at teen hysteria, teenage female friendship, and a weird little town that I'd very much like to drive around and look at more closely.

Why aren't you reeeeal, Twin Peaks

Basically there's the central family, which is Deenie, her brother Eli, and their father, Tom. The girls at Deenie's high school (including Deenie) have all recently gotten their HPV shots, and ALL OF A SUDDEN one of the girls has a fit at school and collapses. She is soon followed by others. What is going on. Is it the shot? SHOULD WE BE VACCINATING OUR CHILDREN (probably) and why are friendships in high school so dramatic, amirite?

Abbott strikes an interesting balance between portraying realistic relationship dynamics -- particularly between friends -- and also making everything just a little off. The people in this town are strange. And what was an extra-sell for me about the book is that it was relatable even when I, in fact, could not relate from my own experience. My high school was tiny. 120 kids tiny. Abbott delves into this weird, changing time in an adolescent's life when they're starting to become sexually active and discover who they are and navigate high school and all this, and honestly, my biggest concern in high school was how I could make my dad drive me two hours so I could see a preview screening of the movie Chicago. Movie musicals were making a comeback and I was going to be there, damnit.

I think you all might be forgetting how great that movie is

No one I knew was involved in even the outer limits of sexual activity. Or if they were, they certainly weren't going to tell me, because I was basically the abstinence movement's spokesperson and I judged. Hard. Turns out it's super-easy to be big on abstinence when you're not attracted to the opposite sex, but that's obviously another story.

So reading about these girls and their friendship dynamics felt foreign, but also familiar in unexpected ways. When you're out of high school and dealing with the usually much easier realm of adult friendships, you can forget things like how important it was to have your closest friends' locker combinations. How when one of your friends began to edge away with someone new, you couldn't do what you'd do now and just say "Dude, what the hell?" because you were a teenager and didn't know how to do that. You hadn't learned yet that most things aren't dramatic and silent agony is rarely the solution to your problems, however many awesome diary entries it might create.

right, like that

The Fever's a quick read, and Megan Abbott seems delightful on Twitter, so I recommend it. It definitely made me want to read her other stuff, which seems to bend towards the noir. This is a genre I'm slowly learning that I like, despite a lack of appreciation for Dashiell Hammett (his style's been too parodied! it's not his fault but it's still a fact!). Give me something dark with a twist and I am there 80% of the time. Also please drop lots of hints about someone not being who they seem to be. That's the best.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Harry Potter 2013 Readalong Signup Post of Amazingness and Jollity

Okay, people. Here it is. Where you sign up to read the entire Harry Potter series (or to reminisce fondly), starting January 2013, assuming we all survive the Mayan apocalypse. I don't think I'm even going to get to Tina and Bette's reunion on The L Word until after Christmas, so here's hopin'. You guys know how this works. Sign up if you want to. If you're new to the blog, know that we are mostly not going to take this seriously. And when we do take it seriously, it's going to be all Monty Python quotes when we disagree on something like the other person's opinion on Draco Malfoy. So be prepared for your parents being likened to hamsters. If you want to write lengthy, heartfelt essays, that is SWELL. But this is maybe not the readalong for you. It's gonna be more posts with this sort of thing: We're starting Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone January 4th. Posts will be on Fridays. The first post will be some sort of hilar

Minithon: The Mini Readathon, January 11th, 2020

The minithon is upon us once more! Minithons are for the lazy. Minithons are for the uncommitted. Minithons are for us. The minithon lasts 6 hours (10 AM to 4 PM CST), therefore making it a mini readathon, as opposed to the lovely Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon and 24in48, both of which you should participate in, but both of which are a longer commitment than this, the Busy Watching Netflix person's readathon. By 'read for six hours' what's really meant in the minithon is "read a little bit and eat a lot of snacks and post pictures of your books and your snacks, but mostly your snacks." We like to keep it a mini theme here, which mainly means justifying your books and your snacks to fit that theme. Does your book have children in it? Mini people! Does it have a dog! Mini wolf! Does it have pencils? Mini versions of graphite mines! or however you get graphite, I don't really know. I just picture toiling miners. The point is, justify it or don't

How to Build a Girl Introductory Post, which is full of wonderful things you probably want to read

Acclaimed (in England mostly) lady Caitlin Moran has a novel coming out. A NOVEL. Where before she has primarily stuck to essays. Curious as we obviously were about this, I and a group of bloggers are having a READALONG of said novel, probably rife with spoilers (maybe they don't really matter for this book, though, so you should totally still read my posts). This is all hosted/cared for/lovingly nursed to health by Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads) because she has a lovely fancy job at an actual bookshop ( Odyssey Books , where you can in fact pre-order this book and then feel delightful about yourself for helping an independent store). Emily and I have negotiated the wonders of Sri Lankan cuisine and wandered the Javits Center together. Would that I could drink with her more often than I have. I feel like we could get to this point, Emily INTRODUCTION-wise (I might've tipped back a little something this evening, thus the constant asides), I am Alice. I enjoy