From her Q & A at BOLO Books:
BOLO Books: Your two most recent novels, The End of Everything and Dare Me, feature more contemporary settings, smaller towns, and younger protagonists and yet I would be very hesitant to call them Young Adult novels. What is it about the girls in theseVisit Megan Abbott's website.stories that make them suitable characters for your brand of story, which is geared more towards adult readers? What is it about the threshold to adulthood that is so ripe with dramatic potential?
Megan Abbott: The passage from innocence into experience is probably the constant across all my books and we see it most strikingly in adolescence. It’s the age at which we truly “make” ourselves or let ourselves be made by others. Our friendships, rivalries, crushes, humiliations—they all create us, and with a fervor you never get at any other age. Everything seems to matter so much. Also, I think many of us are still pretty uncomfortable with acknowledging some of the darker feelings of girls at that age—desire, aggression, jealousy. But I find that such ripe terrain.
And better to write about it than to live it—I think it’s the hardest age of all and I’d...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: Bury Me Deep.
The Page 69 Test: The End of Everything.
--Marshal Zeringue