Give Me Your Hand (Abbott)

Give Me Your Hand 
Megan Abbott, 2018
Little, Brown &Company
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316547208


Summary
You told each other everything. Then she told you too much.

Kit has risen to the top of her profession and is on the brink of achieving everything she wanted. She hasn't let anything stop her.

But now someone else is standing in her way: Diane. Best friends at seventeen, their shared ambition made them inseparable. Until the day Diane told Kit her secret—the worst thing she'd ever done, the worst thing Kit could imagine—and it blew their friendship apart.

Kit is still the only person who knows what Diane did. And now Diane knows something about Kit that could destroy everything she's worked so hard for.

How far would Kit go to make the hard work, the sacrifice, worth it in the end? What wouldn't she give up? Diane thinks Kit is just like her. Maybe she's right. Ambition: it's in the blood. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Where—near Detroit, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Michigan; Ph.D., New York University
• Awards—Edgar Award for Outstanding Fiction
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York


Megan Abbott is an American author of crime fiction and a non-fiction analyst of hardboiled crime fiction. Her novels and short stories have drawn from and re-worked classic subgenres of crime writing, with a female twist.

Abbott grew up in suburban Detroit and graduated from the University of Michigan. She is married to Joshua Gaylord, a New School professor who writes fiction under his own name and the pseudonym "Alden Bell."

Abbott was influenced by film noir, classic noir fiction, and Jeffrey Eugenides's novel The Virgin Suicides. Two of her novels reference notorious crimes. The Song is You (2007) is based around the disappearance of Jean Spangler in 1949, and Bury Me Deep (2009) is based on the 1931 case of Winnie Ruth Judd, who was dubbed the "Trunk Murderess."

Abbott has won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for outstanding fiction. Time named her one of the "23 Authors That We Admire" in 2011.

Book Reviews
Abbott excels in evoking the strange mix of camaraderie and rivalry that exists in academic research…. Female friendship and ambition are threaded throughout her work, and here they form a rich tapestry…. Ultimately, though, the reason to read this compelling and hypnotic novel is… Abbott’s expert dissection of women’s friendships and rivalries. She is…one of the most intelligent and daring novelists working in the crime genre today.
Ruth Ware - New Times Book Review


Give Me Your Hand steadily intensifies its atmosphere of claustrophobia to the point of constriction.… Abbott deliciously draws out tension by hopping back and forth in time, slowly disclosing Diane’s skeleton-in-the-closet while divulging Kit’s moral failings that will inadvertently add to the body count.… Give Me Your Hand, like so many of Abbott’s disturbing tales, dramatizes the adage, "Be careful what you wish for."
Maureen Corrigan - Washington Post


Abbott strongly dissects obsessions that easily morph into destruction and aspirations that spiral into blind ambition. The personalities of Diane and Kit are manifested through their work.… Abbott again shows why she’s one of our best story tellers.
Associated Press


Abbott isn’t just any crime writer. She earned a Ph.D. from New York University studying noir literature and has built a blockbuster caree.… Abbott couldn’t resist the idea of a condition that could be both an explanation for bad behavior and an excuse that ignores the complexity of female killers. She masterfully mines that gray area to build tension.… Abbott’s talent lies in dissecting the complicated tension between women at any age.
Time


(Starred review) When Diane’s secret pulses to the surface, lives are lost and futures are put in doubt in a mad rush to keep the past in its place. No writer can touch Abbott in the realm of twisted desire and relationships between women, both intimate and feral.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) [A] vividly realized world of intense competition and creates life-or-death stakes where we wouldn’t have known to look for them…. Procedural fans may have a few nitpicks, but this is a brilliant riff on… the ultimate unknowability of the human brain.
Booklist


(Starred review) In Abbott’s deft hands, friendship is fused to rivalry, and ambition to fear, with an unsettling level of believability. It will take more than a cold shower to still the blood thumping in your ears when you finish this.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our GENERIC MYSTERY QUESTIONS to start a discussion for GIVE ME YOUR HAND … then take off on your own:

GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers

1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?

2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?

3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?

4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?

5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray.

1. Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
2. Are they plausible or implausible?
3. Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?

6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?

7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?

1. Is the conclusion probable or believable?
2. Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
3. Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
4. Perhaps it's too predictable.
5. Can you envision a different or better ending?

8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?

9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?

(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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