Category Archives: Megan Abbott

Book review: The End of Everything

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

EndThe plot of Megan Abbott’s The End of Everything is deceptively simple.

Evie and Lizzie are two 13 year-old girls and best friends, coming of age in a nameless suburb in seventies Middle America. It’s an idyllic setting until the night Evie goes missing and nothing is ever the same.

Has she run away or was she taken? If she was taken was it a child killer or white slavers? The police have nothing to go on as rumours spread like wildfire.

What does Lizzie know? A hell of a lot more than she realises. If only she can piece it all together. All girls have secrets, but this one’s a real doozy that threatens to bring about, literally, the end of everything.

The End of Everything is new territory for Abbott. Her four previous novels, Die A Little, The Song Is You, Bury Me Deep and Queenpin, all of which I’ve read, are set earlier in the last century and give a hard-boiled but uniquely feminine take on the locations and character stereo types of classic noir.

They are all fantastic reads. Abbott’s bigger than Ben Hur in the US and she deserves to be here.

Her jump into the territory of suburban teen angst could have delivered a simple Virgin Suicides-type tale.… Read more

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Book review: The Song Is You by Megan Abbott

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

YouThis review of Megan Abbott’s The Song Is You is my first of what I hope will be many pieces for Patti Abbott’s excellent blog, Friday’s Forgotten Books.

The Song is You is only the second Megan Abbott book I’ve read, but it’s cemented her place in the select group of authors whose work I recommend to friends with undisguised envy about what awaits them.

Hell, can Abbott write and her take on post-Second World War Hollywood is distinctive and razor sharp.

The Song Is You focuses on Gil ‘Hop’ Hopkins, a studio publicity man/fixer/pimp whose beat is “the world of trouble between mid-night and seven am”. Whether it’s rescuing starlets from opium dens and rough trade or procuring quickie abortions for leading men and studio heads who want to maintain their happily married public personas, it’s just a job for Hopkins.

He does what he’s told and doesn’t ask questions until he gets involved in the disappearance of starlet Jean Sprangler, two years missing with no clues other than a mysterious note and a swirl of rumours.

They shared a moment, if you can call it that, the night before Jean disappeared. A group of them had been drinking hard and they ended up in a seedy harbour side bar, where Hop left Jean in the company of a couple of big name studio crooners with a reputation for playing very rough.… Read more

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Posted in Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Megan Abbott, Noir fiction

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