"HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS BOOK": THE END OF EVERYTHING: Megan Abbott

The following was written as part of a reading group guide.

THE END OF EVERYTHING: A Novel,
by Megan E. Abbott

When I was a kid growing up in Grosse Pointe, a Detroit suburb, I was best friends with a girl named Jody. She lived three doors down from me, and she was blond and delicate where I was ruddier, more tomboyish, more bookish. But we were a perfect match and we spent all our time together. I particularly remember our summers, taking the bus to the community pool, spending our allowance on frozen Snickers bars at the snack bar, parading in our driveways, doing “beach towel” fashion shows by draping our towels into elaborate sarongs.

Part of Jody’s allure was a certain magic in her family, which seemed so much more exotic than my own. She had a raven-haired mother who looked like Elizabeth Taylor and who would sit in the driveway all day in glamorous bathing suits, tanning herself to perfection.

Her father was, no joke, a private detective, the strong, silent type, and his entrances and exits into our life were thrilling. Her sisters were teenagers with boyfriends and rebellions that fascinated. Her older brother, past college, was handsome and kind, with a beautiful girlfriend who lived above a dance studio.

Spending time there, in the attic-eaved second floor, with its pale blue panels hiding secret niches and alcoves, was my favorite, favorite thing to do. I can still remember lying on that deep blue shag in Jody’s bedroom, our bodies matching, our laughter.

Later, we grew apart—a slow process and a painful one. And the family that seemed so perfect began to suffer through small and then large tragedies—a wayward sister gone more wayward, the parents’ separation and then divorce, and, most terrible of all, the death of Jody’s older brother in a boating accident.

There’s something so intense about these relationships we have with other families during our formative years, and that’s one of the main things I wanted to explore in The End of Everything.

The narrator, thirteen-year-old Lizzie, feels so close to her best friend, Evie Verver, that she even feels at times like they share a skin, and the enchantment of the Verver family is a spell she is sure will never break. All her ideas of life come from her time there, in particular the warm glow Mr. Verver, Evie’s handsome dad, casts on the family, the home.

Without even realizing all this (really, until just now), all my feelings of Jody and her family flooded the book, and how could they not? These early relationships, the way we think they will stay the same forever (we need to believe they will), they matter. They form us. And, when they fall apart, we have to do the hard work of building ourselves back up all our own.

Megan Abbott is the author of four previous novels, one of which, QUEENPIN, won the Edgar and Barry awards. BURY ME DEEP was nominated for seven awards in 2009. She has also written a non-fiction book, THE STREET IS MINE (Palgrave) and edited the anthology, A HELL OF A WOMAN (Busted Flush Press). You can find her blog right here. And her web site right here.

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