Dare Me
Megan Abbott, 2012
Little Brown & Co.
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316097772
Summary
Addy Hanlon has always been Beth Cassidy's best friend and trusted lieutenant. Beth calls the shots and Addy carries them out, a long-established order of things that has brought them to the pinnacle of their high-school careers. Now they're seniors who rule the intensely competitive cheer squad, feared and followed by the other girls—until the young new coach arrives.
Cool and commanding, an emissary from the adult world just beyond their reach, Coach Colette French draws Addy and the other cheerleaders into her life. Only Beth, unsettled by the new regime, remains outside Coach's golden circle, waging a subtle but vicious campaign to regain her position as "top girl"—both with the team and with Addy herself.
Then a suicide focuses a police investigation on Coach and her squad. After the first wave of shock and grief, Addy tries to uncover the truth behind the death — and learns that the boundary between loyalty and love can be dangerous terrain.
The raw passions of girlhood are brought to life in this taut, unflinching exploration of friendship, ambition, and power. Award-winning novelist Megan Abbott, writing with what Tom Perrotta has hailed as "total authority and an almost desperate intensity," provides a harrowing glimpse into the dark heart of the all-American girl. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Where—near Detroit, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Michigan; Ph.D., New York University
• Awards—Edgar Award for Outstanding Fiction
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Megan Abbott is an American author of crime fiction and a non-fiction analyst of hardboiled crime fiction. Her novels and short stories have drawn from and re-worked classic subgenres of crime writing, with a female twist.
Abbott grew up in suburban Detroit and graduated from the University of Michigan. She is married to Joshua Gaylord, a New School professor who writes fiction under his own name and the pseudonym "Alden Bell."
Abbott was influenced by film noir, classic noir fiction, and Jeffrey Eugenides's novel The Virgin Suicides. Two of her novels reference notorious crimes. The Song is You (2007) is based around the disappearance of Jean Spangler in 1949, and Bury Me Deep (2009) is based on the 1931 case of Winnie Ruth Judd, who was dubbed the "Trunk Murderess."
Abbott has won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for outstanding fiction. Time named her one of the "23 Authors That We Admire" in 2011.
Works
2005 - Die a Little
2007 - The Song Is You
2007 - Queenpin (2008 Edgar Award; 2008 Barry Award)
2009 - Bury Me Deep
2011 - The End of Everything
2012 - Dare Me
2014 - The Fever
2016 - You Will Know Me
(Author bio from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/9/2016.)
Book Reviews
Fiction has not been kind to cheerleaders. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that future writers are more likely to be found scowling on the bleachers than doing back handsprings across the gymnasium floor. But now Megan Abbott has put her spirit fingers to the task of writing the Great American Cheerleader Novel, and—stop scowling—it's spectacular…Dare Me…is subversive stuff. It's Heathers meets Fight Club good. Abbott pulls it all off with a fresh, nervy voice, and a plot brimming with the jealousy and betrayal you'd expect from a bunch of teenage girls.
Chelsea Cain - New York Times Book Review
Megan Abbott's chilling new novel...turns the frothy world of high-school cheerleading into something truly menacing.
Wall Street Journal
Three cheers for Megan Abbbott's Dare Me... Its take on the culture of young women is chilling and knowing.... If you think all this is working up, "Glee"-like, to a final cheerleading contest, or to a sports-novel-type ending, you are very wrong.
Newsweek
Make no mistake, this is no pulpy teenage tale: It's a very grown-up look at youth culture and how bad behavior can sometimes be redeemed by a couple of good decisions.
O Magazine
Haunting...If cheerleaders scared you in highschool, you'll finish...Dare Me convinced you were right.”
People
What's exciting about Dare Me is how it makes that traditionally masculine genre [noir] feel distinctly female. It feels groundbreaking when Abbott takes noir conventions — loss of innocence, paranoia, the manipulative sexuality of newly independent women — and suggests that they're rooted in high school, deep in the hearts of all-American girls.
Entertainment Weekly
Mesmerizing...one of the most deftly plotted noir crime novels I've read in a long time. The requisite twists and turns subtly embedded within Abbott's characters' motivations...are the sign of a truly accomplished plotter.”
Independent (UK)
Edgar Award-winner Abbott dives into a gut-churning tale of revenge, power, desire, and friendship in the insular world of high school cheerleading.... [W]hen a new coach flippantly removes Beth from power and takes Abby as her confidante, Beth turns vengeful.... Abbott’s writing in her sixth novel is deliciously slick and dark, matching her characters’ threatening circumstances, and the plot is tight and intense, building a world in which even the perky flip of a cheerleader’s skirt holds menace. “There’s something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls,” one character says. Indeed.
Publishers Weekly
Abbott has a keen sense for the beauty, danger, and vulnerability of teenage girls; her spare, elegant prose cuts straight to the heart of the high school pecking order and brings the girls' world to life. Recommended for readers who enjoy dramatic stories about female relationships; it may also appeal to mature young adult readers. —Amy Hoseth, Colorado State Univ. Lib., Fort Collins
Library Journal
(Starred review.) This terrific novel, Abbott takes a plot that seems torn from the headlines and transforms it into Shakespearean tragedy... This is cheerleading as blood sport, Bring It On meets Fight Club—just try putting it down.
Booklist
Edgar winner Abbott again delivers an unsettling look at the inner life of adolescent girls in the guise of a crime story. The setting is an unnamed, frighteningly familiar town that could be found anywhere in contemporary America. Narrator Addy has been lifelong best friend to Beth, now the powerful captain of Sutton Grove High School's cheerleading squad. The cheerleaders are popular mean girls, and Beth is the meanest and most popular. Then a new coach, young and pretty Colette French, arrives. She immediately asserts her authority.... A battle of wills ensues between Coach and Beth.... [T]he question of who is emotional victim versus who is predator becomes murkier and more disturbing than any detective puzzle. Compelling, claustrophobic and slightly creepy in a can't-put-it-down way.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to get a discussion started for Dare Me:
1. Talk about Addy, the narrator. How would you describe her? Is she merely a "tool" of Beth or Coach—pliable and submissive? Or is she someone with a will of her own who simply wants to avoid confrontation?
2. Talk about Beth. What kind of character is she? What happened at summer camp with Addy, Beth and Jaycee? What was going on?
3. Describe the relationship between Addy and Beth. What connects them—what draws the two together and holds them together despite set backs and fights. Who is the needy one in the relationship? Did the dynamics (or how you understood the dynamics) between the two change over the course of the story? Comment on the sexual element between them. Does it shock you...or do you understand it?
4. What was your experience during high school with cheerleaders? Were you a cheerleader? What was the status of cheerleaders in your school? Did you envy them...dismiss them, resent them...like them...or were they not even on your radar?
5. A follow-up to Question 4: The girls in Dare Me are exclusive, mean, and arrogant. At the same time, they're extremely committed, highly disciplined and willing to subject themselves to pain. Do you find them admirable...despicable...or something in between?
6. A follow-up to Questions 4 and 5: Has your attitude toward cheerleading changed after reading Dare Me? Do you consider cheerleading a sport...or performance art? Should it be an Olympic sport?
7. How does author Megan Abbott use cheerleading and their formations, especially the pyramid, as a symbol for adolescent relationships?
8. What do you think of Coach? How did your understanding of her change throughout the novel...or did it? What do you think of her relationship with Addy? Is their friendship appropriate? What draws Addy to Coach? Does Coach use Addy?
9. What is the nature of Coach's personal life? What about her marriage to Matt French? What kind of a mother is she? Is she unhappy, astonishingly selfish...or what? What do we know of her background?
10. Talk about the whole culture of cheerleading. Is it healthy...unhealty...a combination of the two? What do you find disturbing—as well as admirable—about cheerleading? Does the cheerleading culture refelct teen culture in general?
11. Why does Beth do what she does at the end?
12. What do you think of the ending of the novel? Addy now stands before the young, future cheerleaders. What do you think of her message to the younger girls? Has she become Beth? Or is she the New and Improved Beth?
13. How do you view cheerleading performance? Is it too dangerous? Or is it no different than the dangers boys face who play football?