“Dare Me” by Megan Abbott. I wasn’t totally in love with any of the books I read this month, but Dare Me is a very strong book that cleverly reinvents the noir genre by setting it in a high school…and unravels some deep truths about what the book calls, the “dangerous boredom of teenage girls.” Not to mention a few about grown teachers a little too invested in the private lives of their students, a little less wholesome concern than vicarious leering. If you enjoyed “Gone Girl,” you’ll probably also go for this tale of devious women…who are barely old enough to drive.
Dare Me takes place in the world of high school cheerleading, a deceptively boring setting ripe for a noir makeover. It’s told through the point of view of Addy, the trusty lieutenant to the squad’s alpha bitch captain, Beth. The manipulative Beth more or less runs the squad (and the girls in it) until the school’s new cheerleading coach arrives. The new Coach (her “real name” is Collette French, but is often just referred to as Coach, clearly identifying much more with that) shakes up the power dynamic in the squad, and even between Beth and Addy.
Coach is young, fit, more than a little ruthless herself, and casts a powerful spell of “cool” over the impressionable young girls on the squad. She’s a horrible, manipulative role model, but, then again, teenage girls don’t know that. And by the time a suicide (maybe more?) happens, we’ve felt it in the air from the opening page.
What gives the book its kick is a perfect marriage of style and substance. The surface of Dare Me is so interesting because it takes classic trademarks of the noir crime genre (untrustworthy women, betrayal, sexual paranoia and obsession) and sets them in a high school, the place all of us might have felt like the duped protagonists of a Raymond Chandler novel. Addy is stuck as the (mostly) likable heroine while Beth and Coach scheme circles around her. Both of them want to “own” her, and the battle for her malleable mind is an exciting one.
Beneath the surface is even better, as the book—–for all its pulp style and terse sentence structure—–reveals deep truths about the toxic friendships between teenage girls (especially when one of them is the follower), and adults that aren’t quite done with their high school years. Nothing Coach does is for the girls so much as herself, and it would benefit more kids to be wary of duplicitous mentors. Buy a copy below…
AL,
Megan Abbott’s writing compared to Gillian Flynn’s is like comparing the shallowness of water in a teaspoon to the depth of the ocean. Okay that is a gross exerguration, but Megan Abbott is a wanna be mean girl while Gillian is insane.
Comparing both authors is like comparing apples and oranges. Megan’s books should make a teenager with a lick of sence cringe while Flynn is simply a scary human being. You ready a Gillian Flynn and you worry for her, the author not the characters. You read a Megan Abbott and you want to slap her. For both authors, I wonder, “who thinks like that?” And neither query is in a good way.
I couldn’t finish reading Dare Me and I gave it a fighting chance but the story refused to start and I could not stand being in the head of an incipide teenage mean girl cheerleader for one more second.
Cheers,
Ps
Always fun hanging around your block.