Guest post: Megan Abbott
While I was in New York for BEA, I had the opportunity to meet the delightful Megan Abbott. I had just finished her newest book, The End of Everything, and was extremely excited about the opportunity to discuss it with Megan and Julie, who had just read it as well. We found so much to talk about with this book, so I know it would make a great book club pick. I asked Megan if she’d be willing to write a guest post for me, and she quickly agreed. I’m thrilled with this post because I think it gives you a sense of the book.
Photo by Drew Reilly
I want to thank Kathy so much for letting me visit today. In May, we met at Book Expo America. She had just finished an advance copy of my new book, The End of Everything, offering me very nearly my first chance to talk to any reader about the book and it was a thrill and a gift. Since my novel is set there, we spoke at length about the strangeness of suburbia, about the ways its complexities and mysteries are misunderstood. Or missed entirely.
The End of Everything is inspired by my own sense memory of the suburban summers of my youth—the early 1980s, a time, before the internet, before text messages, before the predominance of central air conditioning. A time of screen doors and drunken block parties and uncovering secrets through open windows. I guess we always think the world of our youth was more innocent, and it was in some ways. Dangers, at least in the suburbs, felt remote. Parents were less fearful of their children’s safety. There were fewer distractions, and more heightened intimacies. With few distractions at home (no Facebook, no email, not even cable TV for many of us), we, as children, were young explorers, and the neighborhood was our frontier. Especially in the pre-adolescent years when one’s curiosity is most intense, and one’s yearning to uncover the world’s secrets feels both most constrained and most urgent.
It’s that preadolescent experience that formed the basis of The End of Everything, which tells the story of Lizzie, a 13-year-old-girl, whose best friend Evie vanishes. Lizzie and Evie are close in the way that only young girls—before the full tumult of adolescence—can be. For Lizzie, Evie’s family, the Ververs, have always seemed perfect. Their house feels enchanted to her, and she longs to be a part of their golden world. As a result, Evie’s disappearance is all the harder for Lizzie, who takes up the role of amateur detective to try to find her missing friend.
Since Lizzie narrates the story, the initial challenge of writing the book was to try to teleport myself back to being thirteen, a freighted age for most of us. How hazardous the world can be, and how meaningful. How important everything seems and how you both want to outpace all the changes—get to adulthood faster—and yet haven’t yet the knowledge to understand what those changes mean. What adulthood means.
So, in writing it, I began to remember so many things I’d long forgotten about my own thirteenth year. My body caught halfway between tomboy and teen girl, watching older girls so comfortable in their skin and wondering when that would happen to me (sometimes I feel like I’m still waiting!). The frenzy of secret parties with boys. I remember so distinctly a group of us, boys and girls, gathering at my friend’s house, one boy with a purloined beer bottle we all swapped between frothing hands, one slapping his knee to urge me to sit on his lap—all until a parent’s car hurled up the driveway and sent us all scattered into the street.
Remember, those years: the drama and the tedium, the confusion and longing? At thirteen, everything is big, tantalizing and potentially filled with risk. Both hopelessly bored by childhood and her small suburban world and yet not ready to handle the perils of what lies beyond the half-open door. Who of us was?
In recent weeks, on book tour, readers have been discussing Lizzie with me—about the ways in which they connected with her, or worried for her, or how she made them recall so acutely their own early adolescences. Listening to their responses, however, I came to feel myself overcome with a strange kind of guilt, as though I’d put Lizzie in harm’s way. While she is, I like to think, a strong and smart young person, she hasn’t the experience and caution to protect herself from much—most of all from the series of revelations we all go through at that age. After all, for most of us, it’s the age at which our illusions are slowly (or quickly) deflated. Nothing lasts forever. Love may not be love at all. Parents are fallible. No family is perfect. Life can hurt.
And there Lizzie is, right in the thick of it. As we all were.
In the end, though, I think my fears for Lizzie—in addition to being a bit delusional (she is after all a fictional character!)—are less about Lizzie, and more about that thirteen-year-oldness we never fully leave behind.
Most of our thirteenth years are far less dramatic than Lizzie’s. Most of us never had a friend go missing. But however placid our lives may have appeared from the outside, or in the retelling, none of us escaped tumult. Confusion. Change. The age requires it. And we demand it.
We’d all like to go back—wouldn’t we?—and warn our thirteen-year-old selves. But what would we say? Be careful. Don’t trust him, or her. Listen to the people who love you. Love yourself. But we also know no warning in the world can really protect us from the hazards of growing up.
Great guest post! Having grown up in the suburbs in the late 70s/early 80s, I think this book sounds like something I’d love.
I love love this post! One of the best I’ve read about those long lost years! I’m really intrigued about this book now!
Great post! I remember what it was like wanting to be older, and now I wish I could go back and not wish away my childhood!
Oh, this sounds like a great read! I loved the post. Adding to my wishlist.
Excellent guest post — it makes me want to read The End of Everything. Thanks for the post!
I read this book in a day and a half. It was as tension-inducing (where is Evie?) as it was well written. Reading it brought back memories of my own best friendship at age 13– how my BFF seemed to just get how to be a girl as I limped along behind her. I clearly remember watching her out the window of her house as she laid out in the sun with another girl, talking about boys and Seventeen magazine and what colors they were going to paint their toenails, their legs smoothly shaved. All I wanted to know was why we’d stopped running through the sprinkler. And I’d forgotten to shave my own legs. Again. This book renders all of those feelings– while adding that who-done-it element that keeps you turning the pages. Good job Megan!
Marybeth, I love your reminiscence–it strikes me that one of the ruling principles of early adolescent friendships is the pain of “uneven development”–one of the friends is always lagging behind, one is alwys pushing forward…..such a powerful feeling of abandonment, separation.
To me, one of your very best memories. Life certainly has changed. Gollee.
I really liked this guest post too. I think I somehow will like this book too
That is an age I remember fondly as well, very confusing time but still full of possibilities. I grew up in a city in the 40s and 50s in the Midwest. We were allowed so much freedom that youngsters today don’t have and when we encountered problems, we handled them ourselves without a big issue being made of it. I can remember my mother dropping my friend and I off at the Illinois State Fair and picking us up late, after the evening show, and no one thought twice about it. No one would do such a thing now. It’s a shame. I liked this post so much, and will look for the book.
Isn’t that true? And I wonder about the impact of that on development–it’s a challenge to permit kids to be explorers today….the risks seem so great. But gosh, can friendships ever be so intense, so body-close in the age of social media, where the circles of friends are so large and the speed of communication (gossip, etc.) so fast?
This was a beautifully written guest post! I grew up in those times as well, and can so relate to the way she describes the times before social networking and the internet. It was almost a time of innocence that has been forever changed at this point. This post has really made me want to read this book, and I enjoyed traveling back in time while reading it! Thanks Kathy and Megan!
Great guest post really enjoyed reading it, brings back old memories.
Thank you, all! And so much to Kathy for having me! It was such a pleasure to contribute–isn’t it stunning how powerful those memories of childhood friendships can be? how Intense they can still feel?
Childhood and a mystery, a good combination. A book I’d love to read. Great cover too.
Book Dilettante>
Great post! I grew up in the 60′s and 70′s and remember having that best friend where we were practically attached to each other at the hips. We were out and about in the neighborhood all day in the summer only coming home for lunch and dinner. Everyone kept an eye out for all the neighborhood kids. It’s too bad kids these days can’t experience that. At that age, we thought life was tough but little did we know how tough life is on adults. I have this book on my wish list and hope to read it as it does sound like a book that is not to be missed!
OMG! Fantastic guest post. And you’re right. It really captures not only the book but also Ms. Abbott’s writing style.
Kathy…you are getting more and more followers by the minute…I have to scroll down so far now…lol…
I can’t wait to read that book.
wow, megan’s narrative really brought me back to my own youth in the 80s in rural new jersey (yes, there is such a place!). the screen doors, the adventure that our acres of wooded yards held. nights playing flashlight tag and other hide-and-seek variations, all the while knowing that summer was a different time. kids who never hung around together during the school year would band together in the summers…
the end of everything sounds like a perfect read for the end of my summer vacation. school starts in a few weeks and i’m going to keep an eye out for this book.
I like it when authors guest post. It allows us to get a taste of their writing and, in this case, what the story is about from her perspective. Excellent post. I will find this book as I like stories like this.
Oh those ’80′s! I cannot imagine a better title for the book and for society as it were. . .I read a previous comment that mentioned we can never go back, and it struck me how that way of life, the innocence we knew or that of our parent’s generation is never going to be –
what a magnificent guest post! I love her writing style and I adored this book
The never going back thing is bittersweet. Nostalgic at times and at times you wish you did things differently. Like this post so much.
Excellent guest post. My teenage years were very boring and my friends and I often complained that we were bored….our small town didn’t even have a Mcdonald’s or a mall! That was our big travesty! Then we got licenses (most of us) and headed into the city, and still complained of boredom.
Thanks for sharing the inspiration of your book with us. Sounds like a great read with lots to discuss and reminisce about.
Now I really have to read this book – Megan’s post brought back a rush of teen memories and the akward stages we had to face as we became our adult self. Would there be things I would have said to myself back then… yes, eat and don’t worry about the mirror. Just break the mirror and enjoy life to the fullest.
I remember you talking about Lizzie. Excellent guest post. Makes me want to read the book
What a great post. I think the author and myself are close in age because growing up in the 80s did feel so innocent especially compared to what is happening in the world today and of course the internet (which has changed so many things). I will be reading this one!
Thank you all!
What a terrific guest post! This book is on my wishlist!