The family "cottage," as Jed had called it, turns out to be much grander, "ike a hunting lodge in an old movie." And, inside, in addition to Doctor Ash, the lodge is occupied by a caretaker, the chilly Mrs. In this case, mother really does know best. we all marry strangers," Jacy's mom wearily told her on the day of the wedding. In fact, Jacy married Jed only a few months after they first met, but she's so in love she feels she's known him forever. They're going to visit Jed's widowed father, a retired physician named Doctor Ash, whom Jacy has only met once, fleetingly. As this novel's title suggests, maybe it's the men here who should start running.Īuthor Interviews 'Give Me Your Hand' Explores Female Mysteries And MonstrositiesĪt the outset of Beware the Woman, our narrator, a 30-something pregnant woman named Jacy, is driving with her new husband, Jed, deep into the woods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Her latest novel is called Beware the Woman and it's inspired, not so much by hardboiled mysteries, but by another hallowed suspense genre: the Gothic, which almost always features a woman running in terror through the halls of a maze-like mansion. In other words, Abbott is one smart dame when it comes to sussing out the sexism inherent in those mysteries that so many of us love. But what Abbott's fans may not know is that she holds a doctoral degree in literature and wrote a dissertation on the figure of the macho "tough-guy" in the mysteries of writers like Dashiell Hammett, James M. Megan Abbott is a superstar of the suspense genre who's generated a host of bestsellers like The Turnout and Dare Me, which was made into a series for Netflix. To kick off this summer reading season, I'm recommending two suspense novels that gleefully overturn the age-old "woman-in-trouble" plot.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |