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A review by ridgewaygirl
Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott
5.0
Megan Abbott writes a lot about the dark heart of female friendship. Not the trite idea of two women fighting over a man, like another issue of Archie Comics, but that intense friendship that arises, often between teenagers, where the real love and respect live side by side with competition and betrayal. In Give Me Your Hand, Abbott returns to the subject, but this time moves back and forth through time, recounting both the friendship between two teenage girls focused on the same goal, and their relationship a decade later.
Kit is raised by a financially struggling single mother in an industrial town in California. Senior year, Diane transfers to her high school and they are drawn to each other. Both are highly motivated, competitive and intelligent girls and under Diane's influence, Kit's world opens up to the possibility of going to university. They both are interested in chemistry, with their eyes on a scholarship that would allow Kit to afford to go to the state university. But Diane comes with a secret and it's when she finally confides in Kit that their friendship changes overnight.
Years later, Kit is a graduate student working in the chemistry lab of a noted female scientist. She's working hard, scraping to make ends meet and hoping to be chosen to take part in the glamorous new study that just received funding, when Diane walks back into her life, setting in motion a tragic series of events.
Give Me Your Hand is dark and noir and wonderful. Abbott drags the reader through every uncomfortable moment and emotion as she digs into the competitive world of academia and of female friendship.
Kit is raised by a financially struggling single mother in an industrial town in California. Senior year, Diane transfers to her high school and they are drawn to each other. Both are highly motivated, competitive and intelligent girls and under Diane's influence, Kit's world opens up to the possibility of going to university. They both are interested in chemistry, with their eyes on a scholarship that would allow Kit to afford to go to the state university. But Diane comes with a secret and it's when she finally confides in Kit that their friendship changes overnight.
Years later, Kit is a graduate student working in the chemistry lab of a noted female scientist. She's working hard, scraping to make ends meet and hoping to be chosen to take part in the glamorous new study that just received funding, when Diane walks back into her life, setting in motion a tragic series of events.
Give Me Your Hand is dark and noir and wonderful. Abbott drags the reader through every uncomfortable moment and emotion as she digs into the competitive world of academia and of female friendship.