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Why Megan Abbott says ‘Beware the Woman’ combines ‘all of my worst fears’

June 20, 2023

Megan Abbott is no stranger to darkness. The author made her fiction debut in 2005 with her hardboiled novel “Die a Little,” set in the noir-ish world of 1950s Los Angeles; it was published to rave reviews.

Since then, she’s kept the thrillers coming. Her 2012 novel “Dare Me” dealt with a mysterious death in the world of competitive cheerleading, while “You Will Know Me,” published four years later, explored the cutthroat world of gymnastics. Her bestselling “The Turnout,” published in 2021, told the dark story of a family-run ballet studio wracked by a terrible accident. She’s also a television writer who worked on David Simon and George Pelecanos’ HBO show “The Deuce,” and served as a writer and executive producer on USA Network’s series adaptation of “Dare Me.”

Her latest novel, “Beware the Woman,” out now from G.P. Putnam’s Sons, also doesn’t shy away from the dark — in fact, it revels in it. The book follows Jacy, who has just married a man named Jed, with whom she’s expecting a child. The couple takes a road trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where she meets Jed’s father, Dr. Ash, for the first time. After Jacy experiences a medical scare, she starts to feel like she’s being trapped in Dr. Ash’s house — and that her husband and father-in-law might not be what they seem.

Abbott answered questions about “Beware the Woman” via telephone from New York, where she lives. This conversation has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

Q: Where did the idea for this novel come from?

The fact that it’s all set in one confined location for the most part comes from having written during the pandemic. But it was also coming out of a lot of fear about the rhetoric in the last few years about women’s bodies, and it was just sort of plucking my anxieties about that. I just kept thinking about it, and it became a sort of a combination of all of my worst fears. There’s also that romantic haze of being early in a relationship that Jacy is in, and how you don’t really know that much about the other person. It’s always sort of mystifying to me, but sometimes you end up with someone where you haven’t seen them interact with their family until you’re well into the relationship, and that’s when a lot of other qualities emerge. It can feel like this weirdly alien experience to see how different your significant other can be when brought back down to their family’s perception of them.

Q: When you were writing it, did you make the connection between being in lockdown, and working on this book that’s really claustrophobic?

I have to believe I was thinking of that, but I do tend to write rather claustrophobic books. This one was definitely extreme. Part of it was that it was very hard, in some ways, to write during lockdown, even though we all had more time. There were so many ways to distract our attention, and I thought that writing a book in this really compressed timeline and location would ground me. I ended up drawing on a lot of the anxieties about being stuck, not being able to have a routine, having all these things taken away from you: not being able to see people, the dreaded no Wi-Fi, no cell phones, no service. I think if I were to psychoanalyze it now, I think that had to be a big factor. Someone’s going to do a dissertation someday on post-lockdown fiction. [Laughs]

Q: Did Roe v. Wade being overturned play a part as well?

Weirdly, I finished the novel before that, and in fact, my editor was reading it the day of the overturning. But I was done with the book by then. It’s not that there wasn’t worrying about that for the last few years leading up to it, but it was uncanny, because when I started it, that wasn’t really on anyone’s mind. It was more about a lot of the #MeToo stuff, sexual assault, and all these other components. But I do think that there must have been these unconscious currents in all of us, just seeing these threats to bodies.

I still remember my editor emailing me when the decision came down. I thought, “Clearly, I’m a soothsayer. I’m a Cassandra.” It was such a horrifying moment. It was this accumulation of the last several years of having things that you thought could never happen, happen, and that was the most egregious of them.

Q: The book is set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Is there something about that area that you think lends itself well to suspense fiction?

I grew up in Detroit, which is the opposite end of Michigan, but the Upper Peninsula would always be a place you would go on school trips, and you would go to the Grand Hotel [on Mackinac Island], which was on the way. The Upper Peninsula felt exotic; it was so beautiful, but it had a different culture. I picked it instinctively because I had remembered it as sort of being almost like another country. There was just something different about it. They sort of spoke like in “Fargo” in some way, that really upper Midwest accent. There’s something about the contrast of the natural beauty and the sense of menace, and the outsiders coming in who don’t know the rules of the place.

Q: There’s this trope in American culture, and maybe worldwide culture, about the controlling, unreasonable mother-in-law. But in this novel, it’s the father-in-law who’s the nightmare. Was there any sense of wanting to turn the tables on that stereotype?

Definitely. That was on my mind because that idea of the controlling mother-in-law is much more common. The idea of the mother-in-law who doesn’t want to share her son with her daughter-in-law is a very Gothic trope, too. But I was also really interested in this kind of man of Dr. Ash’s generation, this boomer guy who’s had everything landed in his lap. Often there’s a real charm and a gallant behavior that can be very deceptive, because of course there’s often another side to that. just thought he was such an interesting kind of character. I grew up with a lot of men like that, and very few of them were as complicated as Dr. Ash, but they’re very much used to being kings of the world, a lot of those White boomer men of the middle class and above, the kind that can’t take the changes in the world.

Q: You’re a member of the Writers Guild of America, which is currently on strike. Have you been able to join any of the pickets in New York?

I have. So far, it’s been very exhilarating because there’s so much energy. I wasn’t in the guild the last go-round in 2007 and 2008, but this one feels so different, because there was no real streaming force then. It’s wild how quickly the world has changed. It feels like this one is going to go differently, but I don’t know. But we all have the energy, and the guild is very strong and very united, which is a good feeling.

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Why Megan Abbott says ‘Beware the Woman’ combines ‘all of my worst fears’

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