Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott, book review: An engrossing literary thriller

Inverting the trope of girl as victim, Abbott has written some of the smartest, most engrossing literary thrillers you’ll find on the market today

Author Megan Abbott (Drew Reilly)

“Did someone do something to you?” Kit asks her friend Diane in the first chapter of Megan Abbott’s new novel, Give Me Your Hand. “Did someone hurt you?”

The 17-year-olds are doing their homework together, and Diane’s been in a strange mood ever since the discussion of Hamlet in their English class earlier in the day. He’s got no conscience, Kit proffered after her friend struggled to read Claudius’s speech aloud to the class. Does she think this could actually happen in real life, Diane asks Kit? Can someone have no morals? Yes, Kit replies without hesitation, but then she’s scared. Has someone done something terrible to her friend? “No one did anything to me,” Diane replies. “I’m talking about something I did ... I’m talking about myself.”

Abbott has written some of the smartest, most engrossing literary thrillers you’ll find on the market today, and Give Me Your Hand is no exception. They’re all the more satisfying because she inverts the trope of girl as victim, instead presenting her readers with female characters bubbling over with agency, dark and violent as it may be.

Dare Me was a thriller about the cut-throat world of high school cheerleaders, while in The Fever teenage girls fell prey to mysterious seizures, and in You Will Know Me, Abbott turned to young gymnasts with their eyes on the Olympics. Toxic teenage friendships are Abbott’s speciality, but she’s gone above and beyond in Give Me Your Hand, not least because it explores the longer-term ramifications of a close adolescent bond.

The high school-set sections are flashbacks; the book’s main action takes place 12 years later. Kit is now a determined post-doc in a lab that’s about to begin a pioneering study into premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) – “like PMS only much, much worse”, some women are afflicted by days of sickness, one study participant vomited so violently she tore her own esophagus, while others descend into fits of intense fury, they kill their boyfriends with frying pans or shake their babies. Kit desperately wants one of the three coveted spots on the study, but she’s thrown when competition turns up in the form of Diane. The two haven’t spoken since Diane told Kit about the terrible thing she’d done; a secret Kit’s carried with her ever since.

Abbott evokes the ruthless world of early career academia with aplomb; this readymade tension adds a dose of rocket fuel to a narrative that’s already pulled taut as a drum. This is a novel about female rage, but it’s also about female resilience, ambition and hard work. The PMDD study is Dr. Severin’s baby. She’s the best in her field, a woman both Kit and Diane have both been dreaming about working with since they were two science nerds back at school. When Kit questions Dr. Severin’s introduction of Diane to the team, her boss asks if she’s suffering from impostor syndrome. “That is the real female malady,” Dr. Severin declares. “Perhaps we should be studying that.”

Give Me Your Hand is published by Bloomsbury, £14.99