Review: Give Me Your Hand
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4.5 stars. Wowza. Even just the title - Give Me Your Hand - can mean so many things. It can mean “let me help you” or “I support you” or “trust me” … but it’s a demand, not a request, and if you trust the wrong person, you’re doomed. And it’s especially compelling considering the astounding amount of gender discrimination by women among women, which shouldn’t still be news, but yes, women are capable of severe targeted destruction in competitive environments. How can we trust our friends, when they are often our enemies?
Megan Abbott attempts to unpack this and more in her latest nasty masterpiece. Our protagonist, Dr. Kit Owens, is shocked when her ex-best friend, Diane, appears in her prestigious research lab. Working with her - alongside her - is unthinkable, considering Kit knows Diane’s secret, a secret that begins to resurface with shocking and violent consequences. Can they put the past behind them? Move forward for the sake of science? Ambition collides with fear and regret as the two women fight, almost literally, to the death.
I would like to point out that every woman in this story is layered and interesting. Not a single one of them is formulaic or bland, and they exist to take action with agency. I’m used to seeing female characters serve their male counterparts, helping them move toward center stage, and here it’s the other way around. Abbott has turned something - a convention, a habit, an expectation - on its head, and I am here for it. Also refreshing: questionable decision-making aside, Kit tangibly, and successfully, fights her insecurities.
Speaking of questionable decision-making, I love that deep within this book’s most intense moral quandary, a woman chooses her career over the “right thing to do.” I mean, I don’t recommend her choice, her judgment is unethical at best and illegal at worst. But there’s a part of me who, perhaps in light of recent events, reacted with a fuck yeah girl, I get it, it’s the only way. It’s the only way to get anywhere, to survive, to get what you want. I rooted for her. Which makes you wonder: are we dangerous? Are we as dangerous as men claim, or fear? I think we can be. Maybe that’s the point.
So many questions. Good questions.
Logistically, Give Me Your Hand is a slim and satisfying page-turner with several enjoyable twists. There’s a hint of noir, a boldness of flavor, and a Hitchcockian aftertaste. I docked a star for melodrama but Abbott’s writing is gorgeous and profound and her ability to stoke a campfire of tension inspires. I know I keep coming back to her women, but her women. Her complex, driven, terrifying, sexual, arrogant, fierce, incredible, misguided women. They are addicting. They are cold and wonderful and broken and they are fighters. They fight to show their potential - friendly or otherwise.