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Elle
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
Megan Abbott Reveals the ‘Deranged' Book That Nevertheless ‘Changed My Life'
Welcome to Shelf Life, books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you're on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you're here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too. Megan Abbott's 13th and latest novel, El Dorado Drive , is a riveting thriller centering suburban women and their pyramid schemes—so perhaps it should come as no surprise that the book's already been optioned for an A24 television series. 'Like Tupperware or Mary Kay in the past, [modern pyramid schemes] promise so much, the American Dream within reach,' Abbott says. 'I began imagining how a trio of sisters could get drawn into it and how dangerous it could become. Do these women know when they've crossed a line into criminal activity, and what are they willing to do to keep going?' With El Dorado Drive , 'I wanted to write about women and money,' she says. 'So much of our life is ruled by money and, often, anxieties over money—it reveals so much about ourselves, our dreams and fears, pressures and fantasies.' The El Dorado Drive adaptation will be far from Abbott's first time translating books to the screen. Abbott co-developed the USA Network series Dare Me , based on her mystery set in the cutthroat world of cheerleading; is currently writing and executive producing (along with Taffy Brodesser-Akner) the Lionsgate psychological thriller series Here in the Dark , based on Alexis Soloski's book of the same name ; is co-writing, with author Laura Lippman, Lippman's P.I. Tess Monaghan series; and is also working on adapting Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest for A24/Netflix. The Detroit-born, New York-based bestselling and Edgar-award-winning author was named 'Most Likely to Succeed' in high school; went to the University of Michigan before earning her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University; turned her dissertation into her first book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir ); edited the female noir anthology A Hell of a Woman ; worked as a grant writer for the East Harlem nonprofit Union Settlement; is superstitious; is inspired by photographers, including Sally Mann, William Eggleston, and Gordon Parks, among many others; and lives in an apartment overlooking the Long Island Rail Road. 'It's a cliché, but I do believe books are an empathy machine, and I want to write (and read) about women who may, from the outside, appear troubled, unlikeable, and difficult,' she says. 'I want to be the defense attorney for all my characters, to try to show why they do what they do, what made them who they are.' Good at: writing about female friendship dynamics; owning tchotchkes and multitasking ; hula hooping. Bad at: ballet; all sports; understanding crystals; sleeping. Likes: movies, including Blue Velvet , Dressed to Kill , Some Like It Hot , and Double Indemnity ; mid-century modern design; Film Forum; pulp fiction; Forest Hills Station House and Natural Market in her neighborhood; Nick Cave's music and newsletter, 'The Red Hand Files'; 'Gen X queens' Kim Deal and Kim Gordon; Real Housewives of New York . Writing essentials: sunlight; Orbit peppermint gum; music. Collects: chalkware; first editions; vintage carnival prizes. Peruse her book recommendations below. The book that…: …made me weep uncontrollably: Denis Johnson's Angels , which starts as a wild road trip tale and turns into something heartbreaking, with some deep truths about the American Dream and those left behind: the desperate and dispossessed. ...shaped my worldview: Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem , which seemed to reveal dark, haunting truths about America that, as a 20-year-old, I'd only guessed at before. ...I swear I'll finish one day: George Eliot's Middlemarch . But will I? ...I read in one sitting; it was that good: James M. Cain's Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice , both first-personal confessional crime novels that seem to leap from the page. …made me laugh out loud: Charles Portis's The Dog of the South , or any Charles Portis novel. One of the most idiosyncratic and thrilling voices in American literature. …should be on every college syllabus: Nella Larsen's Harlem Renaissance novel, Passing , a sly, seductive tale that tackles far larger issues. ...I've re-read the most: Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon . I can't help myself. ...has the best opening line: Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier : 'This is the saddest story I have ever heard.' …changed my life: Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry's Helter Skelter , which sounds deranged, but I firmly believe that it and Joe McGinniss's Fatal Vision —both extremely flawed books—inspired at least two generations of crime novelists to find their craft. …has a sex scene that will make you blush: Susanna Moore's In the Cut , which left first-degree burns on my fingertips (or so it felt). …sealed a friendship: Jack Pendarvis's Your Body is Changing , which led to a mutual correspondence and now 20 years of friendship and a longstanding two-person book club. …is a master class on dialogue: Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, where every line sings. …broke my heart: Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence , which gains power as we accumulate experience and heartbreaks. …everyone should read: Lucy Sante's exquisite memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition . …currently sits on my nightstand: Patricia Highsmith's Ripley Under Water . I've been re-reading all the Ripley novels in sequence and continue to marvel at her creation. Bonus question: If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be: John K. King Used & Rare Books in Detroit, Michigan—more than a million books in an abandoned glove factory—what more could you want? Now 32% Off Credit: Harper Perennial Now 41% Off Credit: Picador Modern Classics Now 41% Off Credit: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Now 24% Off Credit: Vintage Now 35% Off Credit: The Overlook Press Now 18% Off Credit: Dover Publications Credit: Straight Arrow Books Credit: Wordsworth Editions Ltd Now 36% Off Credit: W. W. Norton & Company Now 31% Off Credit: Berkley Now 23% Off Credit: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Now 53% Off Credit: Penguin Press Credit: W. W. Norton & Company
Los Angeles Times
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
A pyramid scheme seemed like a good idea — until one of the Bishop sisters was murdered
Leave it to Megan Abbott to tap into the American zeitgeist and play on her readers' fears like a conductor leading a doomsday orchestra. As high school and college graduates across the country celebrate the completion of a major milestone, they — and their nervous parents — are looking ahead to a future marked by political uncertainty and economic insecurity. In an eerie echo, Abbott begins 'El Dorado Drive,' her 11th novel, with a graduation party at the beginning of the Great Recession. Though the party is not a lavish affair — just a gathering for friends and family in the backyard of a rental property on El Dorado Drive in Grosse Pointe, Mich. — it's more than Pam Bishop can afford, and every one of her guests knows it. Any party, no matter how modest, reminds Pam and her two older sisters, Debra and Harper, of all that they've lost. Born into a world of wealth and privilege thanks to Detroit's automotive-fueled postwar prosperity, the Bishop sisters — along with their parents, their peers and their children — watched it all disappear during the decline of the American automobile industry. Pam's ramshackle rental on El Dorado Drive, though several steps down from the home she grew up in or the mansion she moved into when she got married, is a symbol of the reckless pursuit of wealth that destroys those who can't see through the illusion. 'When you grow up in comfort and it all falls away — and your parents with it — money isn't about money,' Abbott writes. 'It's about security, freedom, independence, a promise of wholeness. All those fantasies, illusions. Money was rarely about money.' For Pam's ex-husband, Doug Sullivan, money is a game to be played in order to get what he wants, and he will stop at nothing to get it. But when Pam is brutally murdered in the opening pages, he emerges as a prime suspect. The first half of the novel backtracks from the discovery of Pam's body to the graduation party nine months prior, when each Bishop sister is struggling with serious financial hardship. Locked in an acrimonious divorce with no end in sight, Pam doesn't know how she's going to pay her son's college tuition or handle her rebellious teenage daughter alone. The oldest sister, Debra, is buried under a mountain of medical bills while her husband suffers through another round of chemotherapy and her son slips away in a cloud of marijuana smoke. Harper, the middle child, struggles to make ends meet while rebounding from a relationship that ended in heartbreak. The solution to their money problems arrives in the form of a secret investment club called the Wheel. Run for and by women who have fallen on hard times, the program is simple but sketchy. It costs $5,000 to join, but once the new members recruit five new participants, they are 'gifted' five times their initial buy-in. If this sounds too good to be true, you have more sense than the Bishop sisters. Such is their desperation they don't quite allow themselves to see this is a fairly basic pyramid scheme that depends on fresh blood — and their bank accounts — to keep the Wheel turning. The novel follows Harper, the outsider in the family, due to the fact that she's never married nor had children. She's not part of the community, either, because she's recently returned to Grosse Pointe after time away to mend her broken heart. The first half of the novel concerns the Bishops' dynamics and their found family in the Wheel, which operates like a combination of a cult and a recovery group for women who've lost everything. At a moment of vulnerability, Harper is buttonholed by an old classmate named Sue. 'It's called the Wheel because it never stops moving,' Sue said. Twice a month, we meet. A different member hosts each time, and the meetings were just parties, really. And at these parties, they took turns giving and receiving gifts to one another. To lift one another up. As women should, as they must.' Behind the rhetoric of sisterhood lurks avarice and greed. When Harper asks Pam if anyone ever left the group after just one turn of the Wheel, Pam — a true believer — can't fathom backing out of the group. 'Why would anyone do that?' she asks. The answer proves to be her undoing, and the second half of 'El Dorado Drive' follows Harper as she tries to solve her sister's murder. It's a classic whodunit story with Harper — who has plenty of secrets of her own — playing the role of the reluctant detective. Despite the book's suggestive title, the landscape is anything but illusory for Abbott, who grew up in Grosse Pointe and spent the first 18 years of her life there. Evoking a rich setting has never been a weakness of Abbott's stories. Her novels have a hyperreal quality and are often populated by characters churning with desires they cannot manage. Abbott is especially adept at rendering the hot, messy inner lives of young people and at making a book's backstory as suspenseful as the narrative engine that drives the plot. In 'El Dorado Drive,' however, the focus is on adults, and the past mostly stays in the past. The result is a novel in which the story is straightforward and the stakes are low. Nevertheless, true to her penchant for shocking violence, Abbott delivers a revolting revelation that sets up a series of twists that propels the story to its inevitable, but no less satisfying, conclusion. But then there's the matter of the Wheel. When we watch a video of people in a boat who are drinking, carrying on and disobeying the rules of the road, we don't feel badly for them when they end up in the water, no matter how spectacular the crash, because they brought it on themselves. The same logic applies to the participants in the Wheel. We can empathize with the calamities that prompted these characters to take such foolish chances, but we would never make those choices ourselves. Or would we? One could argue that our era will be defined not by whether the American dream lives or dies but by the questionable choices of our political leaders and, by extension, the people who elected them. We may not know where we'll be tomorrow, but Abbott knows wagering that the wheel of grift, greed and corruption will keep on turning is always a safe bet. Ruland is the author of the novel 'Make It Stop' and the weekly Substack Message from the Underworld.
