Janice Erlbaum is the author of two books for tweens, Lucky Little Things, and Let Me Fix That For You (coming in 2019), the memoirs Girlbomb and Have You Found Her, and the novel for adults I, Liar.Recently I asked Erlbaum about what she was reading. Her reply:
I’m currently reading Megan Abbott’s newest thriller, Give Me Your Hand, about a frenemy-ship between two female lab researchers that leads to some dead bodies. Like the other books of hers I’ve read, this one centers around a screwed-up dynamic between women, which is a subject I adore. Abbott’s plots aren’t about women fighting over men – her women (and her girls) fight each other for reasons I recognize from my own fraught relationships withVisit Janice Erlbaum's website.women – reasons like power, envy, resentment, or boredom.
In Give Me Your Hand, there’s a professional rivalry at play, and one woman wants to renew an old bond forged in school, while the other woman wants to avoid it. In Dare Me, a cheerleader battles with her coach for dominance over the other girls. In The End of Everything, sisters compete in an unspoken rivalry for a father’s attention. Abbott writes about these very specific kinds of power struggles between women, these overlooked outlets for female aggression. It’s refreshing. And, in another subversion of the thriller trope, the corpses in her books are usually male.
The Page 69 Test: Lucky Little Things.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
