Give Me Your Hand

I just finished Megan Abbott’s Give Me Your Hand, another one-day read. I knew of this author from The Fever, and this was another exploration of the female experiences, intense relationships, truth and lies. In Give Me Your Hand, scientist Kit Owens is researching PMDD and insanity in the prestigious, successful Severin lab, when a new hire at the lab turns out to be an old classmate with a dark secret. Lab politics, competition for limited slots on a new project, teenage secrets, and female insanity all connect to make this dramatic pageturner.

It’s been a little while since I read it, but I remember The Fever taking place in shiny suburbia, while Give Me Your Hand has a theme of class and privilege, the haves and have-nots. Kit’s background is at odds with her career in Severin’s lab, and she’s constantly conscious of the gap between herself and her colleagues, who have the connections of good schools and upperclass families. This, of course, plays right into the general imposter syndrome of women at work, especially women in male-dominated fields.

The Fever blended real and magic, normalcy and insanity, and Give My Your Hand does it again. The Severin lab is researching the wild hormones of PMDD, intense PMS. As Abbott describes the women suffering from raging moods and violent actions, at the mercy of their hormones, it’s hard not to empathize. I mean, I don’t want to go kill anyone, but my sarcasm and eyerolls are a bit more pronounced at certain times.

I thought the Severin labmates, even the minor characters, had realistic workmate interactions, and they were shown as focused on their work without becoming scientist caricatures. The low-level sexism — calling Dr. Severin Herr instead of Frau, constant blood “jokes” — was so realistic, too. It was a little disturbing how realistically they turned on each other in competition for a limited number of grant-funded positions.

I think I liked this one even more than The Fever. I felt like I was just beginning to unwrap the secret motivations and connections in the lab when I happened to notice that I was 90% of the way through the novel, and even though I consciously tried to read more slowly, I flew through the whole thing.