The Fever by Megan Abbott

  

Megan Abbott is one of my favorite authors writing today. My introduction to her writing was with the book Dare Me. I picked it up expecting a quick, funny read about mean girls and instead got a psychological thriller about female friendship and competition. The Fever is another book that touches on female friendship and competition, though in a wholly different way.

Deenie is going about her regular teenage life – going to school, hanging out with her girlfriends, and experimenting with boys – when her friend Lise has a seizure in class. Otherwise healthy and happy, the sudden seizure shocks everyone. Then Gabby, another of Deenie’s friends starts developing tics and faints during a school performance. It isn’t long before other girls start displaying unusual symptoms, all of which are unexplained.

Parents of course want an explanation. There are plenty of ideas, all of which are stupid. Some blame the HPV vaccine. This is of course is a red herring, not least because the vaccine is known to be safe. But also, as one health official points out, because the same batch of vaccine was distributed to several different towns so if the vaccine were the cause one would expect to see sick girls in multiple towns not just in this one town. Another theory is the dead lake in town with the fluorescent algae blooms. This sounds plausible until you remember that only teenage girls are getting sick and not anyone else. 

Aside from the mystery illness, The Fever is about female desire, change, and friendships. Parents of sick girls comment how much their daughters have changed, seemingly overnight. They want to blame a vaccine or an environmental poison but the onset of adolescence seems the far more likely culprit. Deenie is confronted with the realization that she may not know her friends as well as she thought.

I enjoyed The Fever. It is slow to start but picks up steam towards the end. A Megan Abbott book is always a treat.