Constant Reader September 2024: You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott

 

One of the first books I reviewed for this segment was The Turnout what was then the most recent best-seller by Megan Abbott arguably one of the greatest writers of female-centric noir, a genre that has all but exploded in the 21^st century. Having read more than my share of her novels I know Abbott has a unique place in this genre. Her female protagonists are not trying to solve mysteries the way one expects from Gillian Flynn or Paula Hawkins. She bares a closer resemblance to the work of Laura Lippman, whose novels I’ve also read extensively over the past couple of years and who herself will be a subject of a review in the near future. Even then the similarities are thematic: the novels are female centric and do involve suspicious deaths but usually the woman is the cause of the crime and is frequently targeted by other women. That’s never been Abbott’s sweet spot either: there is always death and violence in her novels but the crime is almost incidental to a character study and is frequently unsolved by the end of the novel.

Maybe that’s why I was disappointed with Abbott’s most recent novel Beware the Woman. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a riveting read as dark and unsettling as the best of Abbott’s works and I highly recommend it. But even as I read there was something off about it that I couldn’t pick up on until I finished an earlier novel of hers You Will Know Me when it hit me like a ton of bricks.

I won’t spoil that novel because it should be read but I will say that my problem with it is not so much the tale but the teller. Beware the Woman is far more allegorical than any of Abbott’s previous works and is no doubt a justifiable reaction to the many accelerating threats to women’s freedom in the past decade. Abbott does have as much a right to tell this story as anyone else and she does a superb job telling but my problem is that Abbott is not Margaret Atwood and I don’t mean just because her specialty is noir and not dystopian fiction. No the problem is that at the center of the novel is bodily autonomy and if you’ve had the pleasure of enjoying Abbott’s previous work you know that so many of her novels argue that when women have all the choice in the world, they can do horrible things to their body that have nothing to do with sexual freedom.

I find this theme underlying the best of Abbott’s work. Dare Me is a novel about the rivalries between a teenage cheerleading team. The Turnout deals with the discipline it takes to become a ballerina and how those can linger not after you stop dancing. And You Will Know Me looks at the world of competitive gymnastics, a small niche that I guarantee you if anyone reads it and is considering their young daughter for some kind of athletic career will finish this book and practically demand their child start dating boys as soon as possible.

You Will Know Me is at least on the surface the story of the Knox family told by Katie, the mother of Devon a child who is clearly a prodigy at gymnastics who seems headed for the very top of her profession and what happens when a young man they all know ends up dying in a hit and run. Below the surface, however, is the portrait of the kind of family that has a special kind of dysfunction one that is so deeply buried that they don’t seem to recognize it and not even the death seems willing to shatter it.

Reading this book I couldn’t help but be reminded of  I, Tonya and see so much of Alison Janney’s character in Katie Knox. To be clear Katie is devoted to her daughter, wants to protect her and is willing to sacrifice everything for her daughter’s happiness and well-being in a way that Janney’s character isn’t. But the deeper you read You Will Know Me you see a different kind of mother, one who is just better at lying to herself than Janney’s character is about the kind of parent she is.

Early in the novel we learn that Devon was running in the lawn and then had an accident with the lawn mower that did permanent damage to Devon’s foot. Neither of the parents talk about it but Katie has spent her life blaming her husband for that incident and destroying her child’s life. It is that event that leads to Devon discovering gymnastics and its clear from the start how talented she is  But once they realize how good she is, the two of them decide that they will devote their lives to making sure Devon realizes her dream. That leads them to BelStars and Coach Teddy, who after she tries out tells them that he sees potential and waves a word in their head: “Senior Elite’. He tells them that Devon has a once in a generation talent that will put her track for Olympic gold. He tells her: They need to commit.”

So both they and Eric decide, almost without speaking that they will do anything they can, spend any sum, do anything possible to help Devon realize her dream. They never talk about how much of this is based on guilt: that one accident has ruined Devon’s childhood and they will do anything they can to make it better. There doesn’t even seem to be any real discussion as to whether Devon wants it at all. Indeed Devon is almost a cipher in the book, forever putting on a stoneface and rarely seen outside of workouts or training.

This is deliberate by Abbott because as the novel progresses its clear that whatever Devon might want personally has been buried by everyone else. From her coach to the parents to the Boosters who raise the money for the gym. Even her own parents see her more for her talent than as a person. Over and over during the novel whenever Katie refers to Devon it is extraordinary, perfect, and elite. Whenever she defends her daughter, it’s always talked about in terms of her talent and what she can do rather than who she is a person. Late in the novel a character refers to Devon as ‘a thoroughbred’ and Katie says that her child is not a horse. But its almost a reflex from someone who has spent Devon’s entire life seeing her for her talent rather than as a girl.

The novel centers on Ryan Beck, a handsome young man who installs a pit and is brought into the lives of Belstars. Haley, Coach Tim’s niece and fellow instructor becomes attached to him quickly and the two become a couple. Many think the two will get married someday. All of the mothers find him attractive and at the gathering that starts the novel they all spend time flirting with him. By the end of the first section of the book Ryan is dead, the victim of a supposed hit-and-run.

We get the sense very clearly what kind of book this is when Coach Tim, who is shattered by the death, cancels practice for the day. That night both Katie and Eric are home at the same time and Katie can’t remember the last time it’s happened. They’ve spent so much of their lives to Devon’s dream that they don’t know what to do with their free time. Then things get darker when the coach stalls practice for the funeral. The other parents start getting antsy. There’s a meeting where they consider getting another coach. The attitude is sure a young man is dead but finals are coming up. Priorities.

This tone underlies so much of what happens as the investigation into Ryan’s death begins to take a while. The parents increasingly become nervous until the police decide to center their investigation on Hailey who’s been acting erratic since the funeral. When Coach Tim tries to help his niece it doesn’t dim the furor for him one bit. The parents practically start holding practice on their own.

Of course as you’d expect there’s more to it than that but I’m not going to spoil because in an odd way, it’s irrelevant to the novel. What is relevant is how the death reveals so many of the horrible flaws around children training to become athletes and perhaps more horrifyingly, the way their parents begin to marginalize them.

I think the title of the novel comes from the fact that Katie really believes she is a good mother. If anything’s, she’s convinced she’s the better parent, holding on the grudge that Eric is responsible for Devon’s accident, a believe that as the novel comes close to an end, may be another lie she’s told herself over the years. Katie’s convinced she’s a good mother because she’s sacrificed everything for her child.

This becomes very clear with Devon’s younger brother Drew. Katie is convinced that she’s a great parent to Drew and Drew is a good child. But it’s clear from the start of the book that this only relates to the fact he never complains about being secondary to Devon. Halfway through the novel Drew develops scarlet fever and Eric’s reaction is that Devon has to leave the home rather than risk infection. Katie is far more upset that she’s losing Devon than how this will affect Drew.

Indeed we see how horrible a mother she is when she and Drew are on their own and she basically drags her sick child from place to place in her car while she pursues what happened to Ryan – and more importantly, how Devon might be involved. At one point she says she’s going to leave him alone for a few minutes and she’s gone for an hour and a half. On another occasion she goes to Devon’s school and Drew leaves the house to try and find her. Her solution is to keep abandoning Drew with a neighbor and plop him in front of the TV. It’s telling that late in the book when she’s talking about her family she calls them: We three against the world and then has to correct herself. We four. The deeper it becomes clear that her family is very involved in what happened to Ryan, she increasingly seems not angry about the crime but that she wasn’t included in the discussion.

Throughout the novel Katie shows no regard for her daughter, regularly looking at her diary, looking at her phone, prying into every aspect of her daughter’s life. She keeps telling herself that she’s doing this for Devon to protect her. But eventually we learn a dark truth that I am going to reveal because it’s more on point for so much of her work.

Katie and Eric’s marriage was based on a whirlwind romance. At one point she was pregnant and there was a period when she planned to terminate the pregnancy but on the night before the appointment Eric showed up on her door and said he wanted to marry her. On their wedding night, despite not being supposed to drink she has three glasses of champagne and they have sex in the backseat of the car. That night she  thinks to herself: “I’ve got him now. Now he is mine.”

At a critical point in the novel Eric tells Devon that the biggest mistake you can make in life is giving in to sex. And the thing is by that point Eric actually thinks he’s being a good father by telling her. It lays bare everything the Knox family truly is and its telling that by the end of the novel Katie has chosen to ignore it.

And what makes all of this all the more horrible is that we see what the cost of this is. Late in the novel Katie comes to a practice where all the girls are gathered and she looks at all of these gymnasts “It was as if Katie were wearing glasses for the first time in her life, the world suddenly brought into sharp focus.”

 

Devon, whose toes pointed out as she slept. Whose ankles cracked as she walked up the stairs. Who, before she performed, would, one by one, crack all her joints, fingers, knuckles, neck, toes, hips and ankles.”

Katie sees what she has done sees it as “some irrevocable wrong” and then she shuts her eyes. In a sense she’s been doing that Devon’s entire life and she keeps doing it.

The few insights we get into Devon are heartbreaking. All she cares about is being the best. There is an essay she writes in which she gets an A in which she describes her most formative experience in which she makes it clear that her being perfect has been tied to her parents love. On it is drawn a stick figure of Devon with the words ‘Freak!’ on it. Katie sees Devon with girls her own age and she is struck by how beautiful they are: “They were women or close enough.” Then she looks at her daughter:

 

“….stallion thighs stretched against the denim of her jeans, her face small and wan. Her feet, misshapen and scarred…Nearly sixteen. Fearless. Extraordinary. Like no one else. Only herself. Whoever that was. “

Even worse is when Devon leaves class and is teased mercilessly by all of the boys and walks away never looking and you know she’s heard all of this all her life.

And what makes all the more galling is how small the stakes seem to be. At the coda of the novel the Knox’s are at Elite:

“There was no grandstand, no booming sound system, no grease lined concession. No bleachers, even…It was just another convention center, dropped ceiling….long tables and metal folding chairs in the middle, between the beams and bars, judges seated there, Styrofoam coffee cups in hand, watching.”

This is what Devon and the Knox, everyone in their orbit have been aiming for years. This is what their children have trained and sacrificed everything for, their parents have gone into debt for, destroyed their lives for. Even if you discount that most people aren’t willing to coverup the life of a young man and bury his death, this is as anticlimactic as possible for all the work that’s done. And it’s not even the end of the journey for Devon. The book ends before Devon actually begins her event but it doesn’t matter if she succeeds or if she fails. You Will Know Me is a novel that’s about the sacrifices we make for perfection and its clear by the end of the novel Devon herself has been sacrificed. The last line of the book is “Her body was their heart.” But what about her soul? Whatever Devon was, what she might have been was ground into dirt for something that she may never have wanted but will now have blood on her hands for the rest of her life. Even if she makes the Olympics, even if she wins a dozen medals, nothing will make up for that.

But the saddest part is that Katie doesn’t seem to realize that even at the end of the book. “Was one meant to pay forever for a fleeting mistake?” is one of the book’s last lines and by that point it’s not clear what mistake – or whose – Katie is talking about. By the end of the novel she knows the cost of perfection and that’s a price she’s willing to pay. The fact that Devon is paying for it as well doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

That’s why I think there’s an irony of the title. Katie Knox starts the novel sure she knows who her daughter is because she knows her talent. By the end of the novel she knows the truth about who Devon really is and she’s decided she wants to believe the lie instead. She’s placed the entire world on her daughter’s shoulders and by the end of the book she’s just made it exponentially heavier.