#BlogTour ‘The End Of Everything’ by Megan Abbott

About the book…

Thirteen-year old Lizzie Hood and her next door neighbor Evie Verver are inseparable. They are best friends who swap bathing suits and field-hockey sticks, and share everything that’s happened to them. Together they live in the shadow of Evie’s glamorous older sister Dusty, who provides a window on the exotic, intoxicating possibilities of their own teenage horizons. To Lizzie, the Verver household, presided over by Evie’s big-hearted father, is the world’s most perfect place.

And then, one afternoon, Evie disappears. The only clue: a maroon sedan Lizzie spotted driving past the two girls earlier in the day. As a rabid, giddy panic spreads through the Midwestern suburban community, everyone looks to Lizzie for answers. Was Evie unhappy, troubled, upset? Had she mentioned being followed? Would she have gotten into the car of a stranger?

Lizzie takes up her own furtive pursuit of the truth, prowling nights through backyards, peering through windows, pushing herself to the dark center of Evie’s world. Haunted by dreams of her lost friend and titillated by her own new power at the center of the disappearance, Lizzie uncovers secrets and lies that make her wonder if she knew her best friend at all.

Re-released with snazzy new paperback covers by Pan Macmillan, I am thrilled to be sharing my thoughts on ‘The End Of Everything’ by Megan Abbott

My thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for my gifted review e-arc via Netgalley.

This is a dark, noir-ish novel that examines the facts around the case of a disappearing year old girl, from the perspective of her best friend. What could be worse than losing the other half of you, that person who knows you inside and out, the one who looks like a mirror image, until puberty hits? What’s worse is if she comes back….

What makes this book so dark is what makes it so powerful, it is told from the perspective of a 13 year old girl who, whilst walking home from hockey practice, offers a lift to her best friend. She declines, walks away, and is not seen again for 19, excruciating days.

During that time, Lizzie has the ‘survivor syndrome’ in spades, she is questioned, at length, by the police, her mother, and missing Evie’s father. She has known this girl her entire life, known her better than herself, and so it seems understandable that she wants to insert herself into the investigation, be the one who finds the clue that makes everything make sense.

And yet, Lizzie is a ghost in her own life, she haunts her family-brother Ted and her mother are both getting on fine since the divorce and Lizzie’s father moving out-and the Ververs, going around constantly, putting herself in danger and looking for clues as to where Evie has gone. Without her, she is just Lizzie and so, she tries to reinvent herself, make herself feel needed, because she is young, because she feels invisible and powerless. And yet, she has these huge feelings and sensations going on inside her, and narrates some things that as an adult reader, make you feel deeply uncomfortable. It is not in Megan Abbott’s nature to give you an easy ride, and she effortlessly inhabits a teen’s psyche to the point that you feel almost voyeuristic peeking into Lizzie’s feelings.

Half remembered conversations lead to the pointing of the finger to a local , middle aged man, who has also run away at the same time. Coincidence? As rumours swirl around, the potential for violence and manipulation against young girls becomes a tangible threat of evil, it is a rude and cruel awakening to suspect that the man who sells insurance, the innocuous Mr Shaw , could have desired this girl and taken her away from a loving family.

However, this narrative is flipped as Lizzie insinuates herself into the lives of the Ververs, trying to solve the mystery of older sister, Dusty, and her impenetrable façade, coping with her confusing, and growing, feelings towards Mr Verver , at the same time as feeling the presence of a man who is not her father in her own home. Her mother is moving on, her brother is moving on, so is Lizzie confusing her sexual awakening with a need for a father figure?

She wants, and needs, validation and to be looked at with a love which is so great, so powerful, that it hurts the bearer to hold it, and , in recognising this, she becomes increasingly aware of the source of power which she holds, as a young girl, and, stepping out of the shadows of her best friend, can she stand on her own two feet? And how far will she be prepared to go to get to the bottom of why Evie left?

There are uncomfortable truths to be revealed, ones that make slick and twisted reading. As an adult, and a parent, trying to unravel the kernels of truth from a pubescent girl’s observations , I found this challenging and difficult, and it shows how, even in the 21st century, the changing of a girl into a woman is both corruptible and still, ultimately, blamed on the girl for processes which she cannot control.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, though that sounds like the wrong word to use, and found myself thinking about this novel long after it had ended. I am looking forward to reading more of Megan Abbott’s books as Pan Mac re-release her back catalogue.

About the author…

Megan Abbott is the Edgar®-winning author of the novels ‘Die A Little’, ‘Queenpin’, ‘The Song Is You’, ‘Bury Me Deep’, The End of Everything, ‘Dare Me’ ‘The Fever’, ‘You Will Know Me’ and ‘Give Me Your Hand’.

Abbott is co-showrunner, writer and executive producer of DARE ME, the TV show adapted from her novel. She was also a staff writer on HBO’s THE DEUCE. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Believer and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Born in the Detroit area, she graduated from the University of Michigan and received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University. She has taught at NYU, SUNY and the New School University and has served as the John Grisham Writer in Residence at The University of Mississippi.

She is also the author of a nonfiction book, ‘The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir’, and the editor of A Hell of a Woman, an anthology of female crime fiction. She is currently developing two of her novels, Dare Me and The Fever, for television.

Links-http://www.meganabbott.com/

Twitter @meganeabbott @RandomTTours @panmacmillan