Onyx reviews: Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 05/15/2018

The secret 17-year-old Diane Fleming divulges to Kit Owens unleashes a chemical reaction. In the aftermath, both are changed; one is heavier and the other lighter. And, like many reactions, this one is irreversible: the salt produced from the combination of an acid and a base will never spontaneously return to its constituent molecules. Once known, the secret cannot be forgotten.

Destiny seems determined that the two girls—and, later, young women—should cross paths throughout their lives. Their first encounter is at a summer camp, a brief and transient meeting that sets the stage for years to come. Kit sees Diane again in chemistry class when the latter transfers to her high school. At that point, Kit is a listless, unambitious student from a poor single-parent family. She's content to meander into whatever future she can achieve with the least effort, frustrating her teachers and the school guidance counselor, all of whom know she is capable of much more. Diane is a high-achieving student, and their competitive friendship sparks new life in Kit, who becomes interested in science and is determined to vie for a prestigious award.

Diane is a difficult girl to get close to. She is awkward, distant, unemotional and socially inept. One night, Kit tells Diane about an embarrassing encounter with a shoe salesman. To return the display of trust, Diane reveals something terrible she did ("the worst thing anyone's ever told me," Kit thinks) and just like that everything between them changes. Diane can't understand Kit's reaction; Kit can't rid her thoughts of the heavy burden she now shares. Their academic rivalry continues, but their friendship breaks.

Years later (the novel consists of alternating sections labeled "Now" and "Then"), Kit is a postdoctoral fellow in a lab where the principal investigator, Dr. Lena Severin, is about to be funded for research into PMDD, an under-diagnosed disorder in which nearly 10% of women become uncontrollably violent during some of their periods. The lab is an insular place, full of drama, intrigue, gossip and "labrotage"; i.e., lab sabotage, in which rivals attempt to undermine the work of "colleagues" to gain favor with Dr. Severin. There are flirtations, and the team members know little about the lives of their fellow scientists outside of work. By the same token, family members know little about the culture of the lab.

Dr. Severin disrupts this microcosm with the announcement that she has poached an up-and-coming scientist with great potential from a rival lab. Kit is barely surprised to learn that the addition to their group is Diane Fleming. For a long time, she hides the fact that she knew Diane years earlier, but she's not the only one keeping secrets about the past. Then, in a moment of drunken unguardedness, Kit alludes to the shared secret with someone else and immediately has to go into damage control because it could destroy everything good in her life if the truth comes out. A tragic accident in the lab turns into yet another burdensome secret Kit is forced to keep, and the lies pile up, as do the mysteries.

In her recent novels, Abbott has focused on the teenage world and the often fraught relationships between girls. Here, she extends that exploration into early adulthood, where the stakes are, if not higher, at least on a larger stage. One character says, "Women have to live so much of their lives in the in-betweens," and that is particularly true in the world of science, an environment Abbott explores in depth in Give Me Your Hand, paying particular attention to male domination in the field, but also touching on some of its more controversial aspects, such as the need for animal testing.

The book also makes references to madwomen from Shakespeare—Ophelia from Hamlet and Lady MacBeth—as metaphors for the hypothetical disorder Dr. Severin and her team are exploring. As Kit assembles clues from her past, her understanding of the reason things happened the way they did increases. Give Me Your Hand is a fascinating look at the world of women's friendships and animosities, the complexities of their lives in a male-dominated world, and the power of secrets to burden and destroy relationships.