“It was the creepiest conversation,” Abbott remembers. But her editor was reading the manuscript just as text alerts about the landmark case landed - and called Abbott immediately. But it’s hard to avoid the feeling that this creepy house at the far edge of America, where men plot to control the mechanisms of childbirth, is a stand-in for a country losing its bearings.Ībbott began writing the novel in 2021, well before the Dobbs decision came down last June. She soon learns that Jed’s mother died giving birth to him, and as she experiences pregnancy’s expected changes, the rest of the household displays an overbearing interest in her decisions: What she eats, whether or not she can go for a walk, when she will be allowed to head back home.Īs things become increasingly sinister, the narrative turns - as Abbott’s so often do - on interactions between women, in this case Jacy and a stern, somewhat mysterious housekeeper named Mrs. Little of the Ash family history is known to Jacy - or us - before we meet Jed’s father. Look out, she’s coming to L.A.īy the time Megan Abbott first came to Los Angeles, she had already written a book set in the city - her 2005 debut, “Die a Little.” “When she arrives, she’s trying to figure out this family, a little community if you will.”īooks Megan Abbott writes bestsellers about bad people. Ash, in a house on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Young and pregnant with her first child, Jacy travels with her husband, Jed, to meet his father, Dr. “Jacy might be the most conventional character I’ve ever written, the most straight-arrow person,” Abbott says during a Zoom call from her home office in Queens, N.Y. Wade, is a different beast - a “ Get Out“-style horror story about a pregnant woman losing control over her own body.
“ Beware the Woman,” Abbott’s first novel to come out after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs.
In thriller after thriller, from the high-flying cheerleaders of “Dare Me” to the elite gymnasts of “ You Will Know Me,” the ballet teachers of “ The Turnout” to the lab scientists of “Give Me Your Hand,” she has exposed the dark underbelly of female competition. Megan Abbott has made a career out of probing the limits of women’s minds and bodies. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.
0 kommentar(er)
