Give Me Your Hand
Megan Abbot
Pan Macmillan South Africa
Review: Simonéh de Bruin-Fortuin
Kit has risen to the top of her profession. She’s on the brink of achieving everything she’s ever wanted, but someone is standing in her way – Diane.
Diane from high school made Kit who she is today and lit the ambition that’s driven her. Until Diane, being smart never mattered much to Kit. But their friendship is blown apart when Diane tells Kit a secret of the worst thing she’s ever done.
Now, more than a decade later, she’s back in Kit’s life, and this time she learns something that could destroy everything Kit’s worked so hard for.
The past and the present fuse, with both women competing for a coveted career-making position, taking part in groundbreaking new research on premenstrual dysphoric disorder, similar to premenstrual syndrome (PMS) but only much, much worse.
How far would Kit go, to make the hard work, the sacrifice worth it in the end? Diane is beginning to think that Kit is just like her. Maybe she’s right.
Award-winning Abbot is a master of her craft, delineating her characters deftly; while Kit is the main character, fierce but flawed, you cannot help but be drawn to Diane and her inability to connect. As Kit says as the story comes to a climax, “I’m sorry no one ever taught you how to be I’m sorry your brain couldn’t work out how to live in this world.”
Give Me Your Hand is a blistering psychological thriller not only about ambition, obsession and conscience but also about the often complex relationships women have with each other.
