THE FEVER by Megan Abbott
RATING: ★★★★☆
SIMILAR READS: Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman.
GENRE: New adult horror/thriller.
I have had an interest in witches for a very long time–specifically, with the Salem witch trials. In fifth grade, my class held a history fair where we could pick any historical topic we wanted, research it, and make a huge, three-part poster about it. I picked the Salem witch trials and made an aptly creepy poster: painted black, with red paper and printouts of 17th-century illustrations of the hysteric courthouse and its flailing girls, pointing their fingers at their next accused witch.
In college, to my excitement, we studied Salem as a phenomenon, looking into the various theories that have been made about why these girls, in this specific environment, acted the way they did. Was it a mass-spread anxiety borne by a community that faced massive amounts of death each winter due to the harsh conditions? Or a demand for a marginalized group in society–young girls, who virtually had no autonomy–to claim a sort of power? Or a game gone too far?
There have been multiple similar incidences since Salem of communities suddenly falling into an unexplained, shared hysteria, one, in 2012, affecting 18 teenaged girls in a Le Roy, New York high school, who all simultaneously fell ill with unexplained seizures. Parents clamored for answers: what was the school hiding? What was making their daughters sick? Was it hazardous waste?
I’m not sure if Megan Abbott has revealed if this incident in Le Roy served as inspiration for THE FEVER, but it certainly feels like it was. And, unsurprisingly, I absolutely loved it.
Deenie, Lise, and Gabby are best friends attending Dryden high school and experiencing the awkwardness of the coming-of-age years: beginning to experiment with sex, or at least entertaining the idea of doing so; navigating the sometimes brutal social climate of high school friendships; and struggling with the concept that they are slowly being seen more as “young women” and less as children.
On a seemingly normal morning, Deenie and Lise are sitting in class when, suddenly, Lise collapses to the floor, seizing in the middle of class.
Lise is taken to the hospital, and the rumor mill begins: she’s pregnant, she’s on drugs…
Did she go to the lake? One student posits.
The Dryden lake is a green, thick mass of algae and god-knows-what-else. Local legend has it that a boy died in the lake and anyone who comes in contact with it gets sick. Deenie, Lise, Gabby, and other girls at the high school have been to the lake–recently. But Deenie brushes aside any of the rumored causes: if it was caused by the lake, wouldn’t the other girls be getting sick, too?
And that’s when it begins: Gabby faints during a band concert. A slew of high school girls are suddenly dropping like flies in the middle of class, seizing, vomiting, twitching, experiencing hallucinations. Deenie is one of the few girls not affected.
Parents in Dryden are rushing to conclusions. In an anti-vax uprising, some blame the recent outcropping of HPV vaccines. Some blame the school for somehow not complying with hygiene and other contamination standards. As the town begins to fold in on itself, Deenie, her father, Tom, and her brother, Eli try to find out the true cause while trying to assemble some sense of normalcy, but soon, the hysteria becomes too much to handle.
I can safely say that I’m a Megan Abbott fan now. I really enjoyed the narrative being split between Deenie, Eli, and Tom–each character has their own struggles with their own darkness, their own coming-of-age-related anxieties, and their own ideas about what’s happening in Dryden. Abbott does an incredible job of slowly building a very scary narrative that only truly begins to unravel in the last few chapters, and I can safely say that I actually did not expect the actual cause of the sickness.
THE FEVER is a pretty perfect October read if you are looking for a Salem-esque feeling. An essence of hysteria is deep in the bones of this book, making it an incredibly thrilling read.
Bookish Kristen 