Taking a short break from my UK reportage to post about a book I just read. THE END OF EVERYTHING by Megan Abbott.
Let me start by saying that I’m an over 18 kinda girl in every possible way. Don’t have or want kids. Have no interest in tweenyboppers. Yes, I used to be one, but I’m in recovery. You know, like an alcoholic. I’m perfectly happy to forget those terrible years and pretend they never happened. To pretend I was born 40. Under normal circumstances, you couldn’t pay me to read any book with a 13 year old girl as the first-person protagonist.
These are not normal circumstances. This is Megan Abbott.
Megan has been rocking my socks off since DIE A LITTLE and I’m pretty much willing to go anywhere she wants to take me. She took it to a whole new level with THE END OF EVERYTHING.
It’s the story of Lizzie, a barely-teenage bundle of longing and breathless secrets, whose best friend disappears from their nice, suburban neighborhood.
But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that this book is absolutely mesmerizing. Powerful and hypnotic and deeply fucked up. It shares common themes with her previous work, like obsession, self-destruction and the irresistible, headlong madness of bad, bad love, but yet it has it’s own unique cadence that perfectly captures that wondrous and terrible borderland between childhood and puberty.
So now I’m issuing a challenge to my readers, particularly the guys. Break out of your hardboiled comfort zone and read this book. I did, and I fucking loved it. Trust me, you won’t be sorry.