It's 1950s Los Angeles with housewives who make jello with fruit in copper molds and housewives who pop pills. There are Hollywood starlets and Hollywood fixers. There's a schoolteacher, a cop, and women with secrets. The women with secrets in Die a Little are Lora and Alice. Alice comes into Lora's life when she literally crashes into Bill, Lora's brother. In short order Bill and Alice are married. Lora is a schoolteacher and Bill is a junior investigator for the district attorney's office. Alice is like nothing and no one the siblings have either met before. She's beautiful and glamorous, having worked for a Hollywood studio. She seamlessly makes the transition from Hollywood to housewife, preparing extravagant meals and throwing dinner parties like the perfect 1950s housewife as seen on tv. But cleaning and cooking aren't enough to contain Alice's boundless energy, so Alice begins teaching home economics at Lora's school. Lora and Alice carpool together, go shopping together and soon, just as Bill has gained a new wife, Lora had gained a new sister. The more time Lora and Alice spend together, the more Lora begins to suspect that something isn't quite right with her sister-in-law. Alice has a lot of strange friends and even more secrets, and Lora is determined to uncover those secrets and protect her brother.Why are so few of Megan Abbott's books available at my local bookstore? Seriously, I don't understand it. Earlier this year I read Dare Me and was blown away. Expecting a quick read about cheerleaders and mean girls in high school, instead I got a psychological sports thriller. One book and I was a fan of Ms. Abbott and began looking into her backlist. Shockingly, none of her books were available at my local bookstore. Luckily they are available online.The first book off the backlist that I picked was Die a Little, a noir thriller. Granted this is only the second of Ms. Abbott's books that I've read but based on this small sample it appears that Ms. Abbott specializes in noir thriller with strong female characters. It's like Ms. Abbott is channeling Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett only the female characters are more than femme fatales or sweet virgins who exist simply to tempt men one way or another. In Ms. Abbott's books women take center stage.Ms. Abbott has a way of sneaking up on a reader and surprising them. Early in the story there are details about what one might call feminine life - details about recipes, clothing, and parties. But it is all facade (much of the way the whole perfect 1950s housewife is). Recipes give way to heartbroken housewives who turn to medicinal concoctions to cope. Men who have been raised to save the damsel in distress find themselves making compromises. People turn out to be complicated and messy. Die a Little is short book - just under 250 pages - but this small volume packs a punch. She is definitely an author whose career I will continue to follow.
This is a great book, and I don't know how I have missed Megan Abbott until now.'Die a Little' was first published almost ten years ago but I stopped reading at one point to check that it wasn't actually a novel from the 1950's that had maybe been re-published at this later date.Another reviewer here on Goodreads, Michelle, nails it with perhaps the best one-liner I have seen in a review: Megan Abbott's writing is a mixture of "Jim Thompson, James M Cain and Doris Day".Lora King is a Doris Day, a Grace Kelly, a Tippi Hedren:perfection at arm's length, never dirty, never tempted - or so it seems until, when Lora's 'too good to be true' brother is nudged from his pedestal into the arms of the mercurial Alice Steele, the ice-queen Lora's lovely life is jolted by Alice's chaos and she comes out fighting, blood red in tooth and claw. "She only smiles in return, and in her smile I can see nothing, not a stray flicker of fear or anger or anything at all. But what I know is this: There's a reason she's wearing this blankness, this mechanical look stripped of her heat, energy, her intermittent chaos. There's a reason she's wearing this face. And I'm the reason."Through Lora's eyes Abbott cranks the tension seamlessly, pulling the reader one way and then another; is this Lora the reliable narrator I thought she was? Will this all end in some paradigm twisting climax that betrays the reader? No, Abbott is better than that, she tempts and rewards like a torturer but the plot is solid and satisfying - and yet this book doesn't rely on only a slippery plot of mystery and intrigue. The writing itself is a joy and, with the cruel final twist and the characters' voices lingering after the last page, this is a definite 5 stars. If nothing else, it is worth reading if only so you may appreciate Michelle's one-liner - "Jim Thompson, James M Cain and Doris Day".
What do You think about Die A Little (2005)?
The 1950s seems to be an idealized era, full of change and promise; some would say it was a simpler time. Veterans were settling down to desk jobs, marrying, and raising families of their own. Women's fashion, technology, and the entertainment world were swerving in a new direction. Everyone seemed to be generally prospering and there was relative peace. That's the world that Lora, a twenty-something school teacher, and her brother Bill live in: a serene, quiet existence in West Pasadena.The day Alice Steele careens into Bill's life, Lora can't help but feel that life as they know it will never be the same again. Alice has been places, knows things, and as she digs her heels into Bill's heart, she brings along friends from her old life in Hollywood and seedy Los Angeles. How bad can she be? Just you wait!I really enjoyed this book! After finding James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia gripping but too dark for my liking, I found Abbott to be just the right balance. The female perspective was nice, but like Gillian Flynn, she doesn't hold any punches. Things get pretty gritty, so hold on your hats and short laced gloves!
—Eve
I think this is my favorite of Megan Abbott's neo-pulp/noirs (well, maybe I like it the same as Queenpin). But there is this quality about her novels that I've never been able to decide is an asset or an issue, and it's strongly present in Die a Little - the men are nonentities; at best, they're symbols. And at least in some cases (Queenpin) that's purposeful; in Die a Little Mike Standish comes pretty close to being a person (he's charming, it's kind of a shame) but Bill, Lora's brother is (quite consciously, I think) a cipher and symbol. I'm not opposed to vapid men in fiction; but I'm not sure how Bill comes to represent the same thing for Alice as he does for Lora - and so I'm not sure how, like, the plot happens.Abbott is really good, though, at writing women in difficult relationships with each other. Particularly, women who are tied together but can't quite work out . . . why. (She's less good at showing the reader the "why" - but that's okay, I think, given the genre conventions.) I do always wish she were writing lesbian pulp, but I guess we can't have everything.
—Madeline
Megan Abbott, she keeps writing this story. There is this girl and she is living in the shadow of another girl. The other girl, gets all the attention, sucks up the light, she is flashy, mysterious, sultry, dangerous and enticing. This girl is unsure if she wants to be like the other girl, or be with the other girl or both. I don't know, because she never tells you anything plainly, she just hints, and each hint is accompanied by a tease. The men? They flit in and out of shadows, mostly burley types, with five o'clock beards and smug smiles acting confident, telling stories. But, is it the real story, or are they just props in a background meant to deceive? I don't know. What I do know is that she likes to tease, to make you edgy, tense, nervously turning her pages ...wanting to know, just who she is?And, the mystery? It's the same. Like the relationship, nervous and edgy, hinting and teasing, never quite clear. Leaving you, racing through her words ...just wanting to know.
—Francis
