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A review by vacantbones
The End of Everything by Megan Abbott
2.0
I've loved Megan Abbott's work for years, devouring each new release as it hits the shelves, but The End of Everything was my blindspot, a book that I hadn't even known existed until I stumbled upon it in the stacks. There's something electric about finding a book you've missed by an author you adore. Unfortunately, this one was a total crash and burn for me.
I can appreciate that Abbott is trying to tell a story here that really digs into the wound that is being a (barely) teenage girl. She truly captures the mind of a young girl, that sense of knowing everything and being desperate to fill a hole that you've always known existed. But Abbott's flowery, beautiful, polarizing way of writing just didn't mesh with the narrator, in my opinion. Lizzie is really, really tough to like, and while a likable narrator is far from important for a story to be good, it just greatly hindered my ability to sink into the narrative. It's typical of a 13 year-old girl to make something so large and awful about herself because she truly does not know better, sure, but Lizzie's way of framing the story was off-putting to me and I found myself tired of reading through the eyes of someone whose lies and deceit are met with no consequence.
I also found the way that the story is, at its heart, about the relationships between young women and the men they put at the center of their world, to be well-written and heartbreaking, but in many ways it was disturbing without delivering the things that make so many of us dive into books that we know will churn our stomachs. The way that The End of Everything is, essentially, about three girls in relation to Mr. Verver, just didn't click with me. Truthfully, I think that this has to do with Abbott's way of writing - it's haunting, and poetic, and I could read it for days straight, but the way in which she often leads us to read between the lines left this particular plot feeling empty at times.
I deeply wish that I loved this one, but I knew it was too good to be true that I hadn't found a book I didn't love by this author.
I can appreciate that Abbott is trying to tell a story here that really digs into the wound that is being a (barely) teenage girl. She truly captures the mind of a young girl, that sense of knowing everything and being desperate to fill a hole that you've always known existed. But Abbott's flowery, beautiful, polarizing way of writing just didn't mesh with the narrator, in my opinion. Lizzie is really, really tough to like, and while a likable narrator is far from important for a story to be good, it just greatly hindered my ability to sink into the narrative. It's typical of a 13 year-old girl to make something so large and awful about herself because she truly does not know better, sure, but Lizzie's way of framing the story was off-putting to me and I found myself tired of reading through the eyes of someone whose lies and deceit are met with no consequence.
I also found the way that the story is, at its heart, about the relationships between young women and the men they put at the center of their world, to be well-written and heartbreaking, but in many ways it was disturbing without delivering the things that make so many of us dive into books that we know will churn our stomachs. The way that The End of Everything is, essentially, about three girls in relation to Mr. Verver, just didn't click with me. Truthfully, I think that this has to do with Abbott's way of writing - it's haunting, and poetic, and I could read it for days straight, but the way in which she often leads us to read between the lines left this particular plot feeling empty at times.
I deeply wish that I loved this one, but I knew it was too good to be true that I hadn't found a book I didn't love by this author.