Trudi's Reviews > You Will Know Me

"Take my hand when I falter, for I cannot make this journey alone. I do not know you, but you will know me."
~Nadia Comaneci, Letters to a Young Gymnast

If, like me, you've lived a life of inexplicable obsession fascination with the world of competitive gymnastics, this latest by the Mighty Megan Abbott is going to rock your world. If you've never given competitive gymnastics a single thought what is wrong with you -- this book is going to rock your world anyway.

In recent years, Abbott has taken the domestic thriller, suburban noir and made it her bitch. She's often writing about the interior lives of adolescent girls because she's proven time and again what deep, murky waters run there, what unsettling truths there are to be found when innocence is lost and a sexual awakening is found.

You Will Know Me is more focused on the family unit this time, though its teen protagonist -- 15 year old Devon Knox -- certainly plays a major role. Devon's compulsive, all-consuming journey to be the best, to be a champion, has also consumed her family -- mom Katie, dad Eric, and little brother Drew (who just about broke my heart). Most of the book unfolds from Katie's viewpoint as she strives to be the perfect support and anchor for her prodigy daughter, while keeping the domestic front of chores, groceries, wifely duties and a freelance job on track. Katie also has a quiet, patient, introverted little boy to nurture who sees much but says very little.

Down into the rabbit hole of competitive gymnastics Abbott takes us, the sacrifices required of a family to raise an Olympic competitor, because the young female gymnast could never get there on her own. But Devon's quest to reach Olympic level competition will be threatened by the tragic death of a handsome young man, a death that comes like a nuclear bomb dropped into the middle of a perfectly, rigidly balanced life of discipline and routine. The Knox family are left reeling, seeking answers, and fearing truths. Secrets will out, and in the light of day they will come to realize that those we often feel we know the best, we don't really know at all.

This is a twisty book, and Abbott has a few surprises up her sleeve, but not of the Gone Girl variety -- that's not what she's up to here. I figured it all out several times, and knew where she was headed, but that in no way diminished from the sense of tension and inexorable suspense. If anything, knowing amped it all to eleven. As readers we're watching the train leave the tracks in slow motion as the main characters move closer to unbearable discovery. And I felt the point wasn't really figuring out what happened, the point becomes what characters do now that they know.

Abbott is at the top of her game here -- I had no hesitation awarding all five stars. This one you will not want to miss.

Recently, Abbott wrote an article for Elle in which she attempts to answer: "Why Are We So Obsessed With Gymnasts?" As a companion piece to this book, it's worth checking out.

"Because now, of course, these gymnasts are girls but also, and foremost, powerful and blazingly talented women. Perhaps that is the paradox that keeps us rapt. Biles, four feet nine inches tall, in a pink, crystal-studded leotard and with that cherubic face, radiates girl. And yet the instant she takes glorious flight, she is beyond reckoning, defying gravity, logic, reason.
~Megan Abbott, "Why We are So Obsessed With Gymnasts"