The Fever

Megan Abbott is one of my favorite authors although I do prefer her noir stories set in the past rather than her contemporary books which are usually centred around teenage girls. In The Fever we have a strange story about an epidemic that seems to affect the teenage girls who attend one particular high school in a small town. This malaise causes seizures, hallucinations, and a community-wide panic. It’s the not knowing the cause of this disease that drives the narrative. Could the girls have received a bad batch of medicine when getting their HPV vaccination, could it be poison from the local polluted lake, could it possibly be group hysteria or stranger still, could it be something deliberately given to the girls.

In The Fever, Megan show more Abbott has delved into the mind set of a group of teenage girls and this, along with the mounting tension, and the dark subject made for a fascinating read. I could not put the book down even though I found the story rather icky, I needed to find out what was going on and why.

The story is told from three viewpoints, a teenage girl, her father and her brother and while nothing can be totally taken at face value, a vivid picture of a community under immense stress emerges. The Fever is a story of jealousy, panic, fear and mass hysteria and this dark story will be one that I remember for some time. show less

At times Megan Abbott's 2014 novel “The Fever” reads like an amateur detective mystery, a medical thriller, a teen romance and and even a story about witchcraft and superstition — and indeed it is all of those things.

A lovely high school girl experiences a mysterious seizure in class and is hospitalized in serious condition. Then other girls report similar conditions, though not as severe. The rumor mill among students, parents and teachers kicks into high gear. Is it drugs? Is it the effects of a polluted nearby lake? Is it a sexually transmitted disease? Is it the HPV vaccine all the girls received? Is it some kind of supervirus? Or is it Deenie Nash, the one girl in the group who seems to be OK but has had contact with all the show more others?

Abbott's story focuses on Deenie and her older brother Eli, a popular jock in the same school, and Tom, their single father who teaches at the school. In their own way, each member of the family searches for answers, even as medical authorities and school authorities conduct their own more official probes.

Abbott keeps the tension building as the hysteria rises. One important character turns out to be at the center of the mystery without even realizing it. It's all high-tension excitement, and best of all, a mystery in which nobody dies. show less

The Fever explores the phenomenon of mass hysteria and the mob mentality, for that is exactly what is occurring throughout the novel. Rumors fly, townspeople make assumptions based on those rumors, and panic exponentially builds as more girls fall prey to the contagion. Thanks to the constant connection associated with smartphones and the Internet, the speed at which the rumors evolve into “the truth” is frightening. For that reason, the story is also a telling commentary on the changing dynamics of social interaction. Gone are the days when word of mouth meant just that, and one quick tap of a key is enough to change a person’s life forever.

The Fever is a fast-paced and chilling book. While it is a character-driven story, over show more time the characters lose importance compared with the town’s reaction in general. Deenie is a forgettable character, as she too easily blends into the background of the ensuing chaos, while her friends are nothing more than a cross between Mean Girls and The Crucible teens, neither comparison a flattering one. The subplot surrounding Eli is a simple distraction. The same can be said about Tom’s story, although his version does have the added benefit of providing insight into the adult reactions. However, it is the panic and disorder throughout the town that hits its target with readers. What the contagion is as well as its origins are minor compared to the mass pandemonium that happens when the girls start getting sick. For a fascinating and terrifying modern-day study of mass hysteria and the mob mentality in the Internet era, one need look no further than Megan Abbott’s latest. show less

An epidemic of trust issues

The Fever by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown & Company, $26).

Megan Abbott can write from the perspective of teenagers so well, it’s like getting inside their heads—and that’s not something that can be said for many writers, especially once outside the “young adult” sub-genre. But Abbott writes for adults (although it’s certainly true that older teens and young adults would find these themes of interest, the language and structure is much more literary and might be too difficult to follow).

In her latest, The Fever, we focus on the Nash family. Despite being split by divorce, they are close; high school students Eli and Deenie live with their father, Tom, a high school teacher. Both the teens are on the show more cusp of adulthood—and beginning to experiment with sexual expression, though neither is particularly comfortable with the way things are going.

Then Deenie’s beautiful friend, Lise, is suddenly struck ill. She has a seizure in class, then another once she’s home and falls, striking her head on a coffee table. There’s also some heart involvement—this girl is seriously, seriously sick.

But the heart of the novel is the panic that strikes after, as everyone—especially the girls, not all of whom are kind and unselfish (they are, after all, teenage girls, and civilization remains a veneer) worries about the illness. Then another friend, Gabby, has a similar episode. And more and more girls get sick, with such a wide variety of symptoms that it could be anything—environmental poisons, HPV vaccine, a new STD or bad birth control—even mass hysteria.

Well, it has been known to happen. And it’s not as if adolescence is exactly free of pressures and stress, especially for girls, who are expected to be good and bad (in the best kind of way) at the same time.

But this isn’t your typical suburban problem novel. It’s more complex than that, as Abbott focuses on Deenie’s own perceptions, jealousies, and anxieties, while letting us see for a while just how freaking hard it is to be a young woman, even in a nice town with a good school.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.com show less

I didn't even make it to Chicago before I realized that I'd radically underestimated the number of books I was going to need to make it to NYC. See, the NYC trip was supposed to be all books all the time, and I expected to board the train back home with all the new books I could carry, so I'd tried to minimize the books I brought there, to leave more room for new books. Well, I minimized too far.

So I was excited to see a Barnes and Noble on the way back to the train station after the Art Institute and Millennial Park, even if it was a college Barnes and Noble with limited selection. I wandered around for ages before finally settling on this, which I'd been meaning to read, I'd just intended to borrow it from Karen. Oh, well.

It was a show more great book for the back half of a long train ride when one might get a little impatient with back to back books. Abbott's writing rides that mystery/thriller line already, and in this case the mystery is such that you are constantly wondering if there isn't a supernatural element as well. A girl has a seizure. A normal, healthy teenage girl. And then another girl. And another. The town panics and starts pointing fingers. It's the polluted lake with its weird algal blooms. It's asbestos in the school. It's vaccines! Girls are freaking out and parents are getting hysterical and you start to wonder how long before someone's head is on a plate.

But not forgotten, and indeed the backbone of the story are the more ordinary dramas of teen life. Complicated families. All consuming crushes. The uncertainty of burgeoning sexuality. These things Abbott does so well.

I couldn't put it down. And the resolution didn't drop a single one of all the many balls in the air. I may have to go read all of Abbott's back catalog. show less

"We're all sick here."

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review through Library Thing's Early Reviewers program.)

On the surface, the Nashes seem to be the model, all-American family. Father Tom teaches history at the local high school, where his son Eli excels at hockey (not to mention heartthrobbery), and daughter Deenie is an exemplary student. But when a mysterious illness rips through the female population of Dryden High School - starting with Deenie's own clique of friends - the ensuing panic brings long-buried family secrets to the fore. Could Deenie and Eli's estranged mother have been right to flee Dryden when she did - ahead of the "demon fog" that threatens to corrupt the town wholesale? Or is the cause show more of the looming epidemic much more mundane?: HPV vaccines, pollution, stress?

As more and more girls succumb to fits of seizures, vomiting, and hallucinations, hysteria tightens its grip on parents, school administrators, and the media. By week's end, one thing is clear: Dryden's survivors will never be the same.

Megan Abbott's The Fever is an eerie, atmospheric retelling of The Crucible, for a modern YA audience. It's got a wonderfully creepy vibe that's slightly negated by the decidedly natural (as opposed to supernatural) ending - which, conversely, also makes the story that much more plausible. Since the threat looming over Dryden remains unidentified until the final chapters, the parents (and readers, some of whom may also be parents) are invited to use it as a placeholder for their own worries and fears: teenage sexuality, vaccines, environmental catastrophe, internet predators, pedophiles, gun violence - or even their own shortcomings as parents: "We're all sick here."

Of all the characters, it is the town itself that left the most indelible impression on my consciousness: gloomy and dank, with a pervasive mist that seems to work its way into the very atoms of one's being. In fact, the forlorn countenance of the town stands at stark odds with the early springtime setting of the story, with all its new greenery and promises of rebirth. Darkness and light, dancing with one another in an endless cycle of destruction and creation, madness and reason, storms so strong they threaten to wipe entire towns off the map - and the calm that comes after.

The fever may have lifted for Deenie and her peers...but there's no guaranteeing that it won't resurface, years or decades down the line, to infect future generations.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2014/08/13/the-fever-a-novel-by-megan-abbott/ show less

Here's how I know this book is well-written. Because I almost gave up on it about a third of the way through but, once I picked it up again, I basically couldn't stop until I was done.
I didn't almost give up on it because I didn't like the writing. I did it because the story made me uncomfortable. It centers around girls in high school, some of whom come down with an inexplicable, sudden and violent illness. And inside the heads of teenage girls is not a place I like to be. Probably because I didn't particularly like it when I *was* a teenage girl. So going back there, or going back into that world, is not something i would normally choose in my leisure reading.
But I kept going for two reasons. Well, three: I almost never give up on a show more book. But mostly because I met Megan Abbott at this year's Key West Literary Seminar and was immensely impressed by her, and her earlier noir books. And because I figured it's good for me to get out of my comfort zone and read something that's not in my wheelhouse(s).
And I'm glad I did. Really glad. Because this book wound up being a totally engrossing novel -- I can't call it a crime novel, or a thriller, even though you do learn, in the end, what set off the worst of the illnesses. And it's a reminder of what a fraught time adolescence is, even for kids that seem to be popular and well-adjusted. I'm not the only one grateful to have gotten through that and come out to the other side. show less